Michel Platini meets Turkey's prime minister

Michel Platini meets Turkey's prime minister

Published Mar. 19, 2012 5:32 p.m. ET

UEFA President Michel Platini met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday amid a match-fixing scandal that has implicated league champion Fenerbahce and caused it to lose its place in the Champions League.

No announcement was made after the meeting between Erdogan and Platini, who is pressing nations to tackle match-fixing.

The meeting came ahead of a UEFA executive committee meeting and its annual congress in Istanbul later this week.

Fenerbahce's imprisoned chairman, Aziz Yildirim, is the main defendant in a trial about the scandal which allegedly involves more than a dozen games last season. Yildirim denies any wrongdoing.

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The team could also be stripped of last year's title, kicked out of the top flight and forced to play in a lower division, penalties that could cost the 16-time league champions millions.

The club insists UEFA and the Turkish Football Federation has treated it unfairly and has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, seeking ?45 million ($58.5 million) in compensation for being tossed out of the Champions League.

The CAS hearing has been delayed after being originally scheduled for Thursday, the same day as the annual congress meets.

World sport's highest court said Monday that the hearing is now unlikely to take place before May.

Earlier this year, the head of the Turkish Football Federation quit in the fallout of how to deal with the teams implicated in the scandal.

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