FIFA is still paying Sepp Blatter his estimated $6 million salary despite ban from football

Despite being banned from the world of international football for eight years, Sepp Blatter will continue to receive his salary from FIFA until a new president is elected in late February, a FIFA spokesperson confirmed to Simon Evans of Reuters.

Blatter, along with Michel Platini, were kicked out of soccer in December when the FIFA ethics committee handed down 8-year suspensions for both over a $2 million conflict-of-interest payment FIFA made to Platini that was approved by Blatter and is part of a Swiss criminal investigation.

As Evans notes, Blatter was originally suspended for 90 days in early October which means Blatter will ultimately be paid five months of his salary during a period in which he was not serving as FIFA's president. Issa Hayatou, the president of the African Football, has been serving as the acting FIFA president and presumably is also being paid during Blatter's suspension.

While Blatter's salary is unknown, FIFA's financials do say that they paid out $39.7 million in salaries in 2014 to "key management personnel," which would include Blatter. Using that data and other pieces of evidence, Roger Piekle Jr. of Sporting Intelligence was able to make a strong argument that Blatter's salary is in the range of $6-16 million per year.

If we use the lower end of that range, that would mean Blatter will ultimately be paid at least $2.5 million during his suspension, which is more than the payment to Platini that led to the suspensions in the first place.

In 2011, Blatter claimed that his salary at the time was "$1 million, perhaps a bit more."