As 2015 comes to an end, I must record my sense of utter joy and delight on reading the ban handed out to Fifa president Sepp Blatter and Union of European Football Associations (Uefa) president Michel Platini.

At the risk of exaggerating, I believe this is the highlight of 2015 in showing that your sins will eventually catch up with you.

Did they really think any sane person will accept the pathetic excuse that the two million Swiss franc (US$2 million, RM8.58 million) payment that the Fifa leader authorised for Platini was for work that the French football legend carried out as a consultant from 1998 to 2002, but paid in 2011 without a contract being drawn up - and this amount not even accrued in Fifa accounts between 1998 and 2002?

But then in Malaysia, people are ready to believe even more bizarre excuses, right?

The Sun Daily football columnist Bob Holmes wrote extensively on this, and I could not have possibly written better.

I am elated, as these megalomaniacs - similar to many heads of governments - believe that normal laws are for others and not applicable to them, and that they can do whatever they want and get away with it.

Living in Malaysia where one reads with great sadness and utter exasperation that many transgressions - especially involving public money - are not only going unpunished, but met with utter contempt and arrogance by the guilty party instead, it is indeed heartening to see the mighty once-untouchable Blatter being brought to his knees.

For this, we have indeed the US authorities to thank for. Call them whatever you like, loathe them, ridicule them, but history has proven countless times that things only happen when the US gets involved.

They don’t always come out of it smelling roses, but things move when the US gets agitated. None of these many façades of the unfolding Fifa scandal would have even seen the light of day without the US authorities getting a bee in their bonnet about.

Meanwhile, Europe - where both Fifa and Uefa are headquartered - had been playing footsie when all these shenanigans were going on.

Bravo, here’s one up for the common people. People of the World: 1, Kleptomaniacs: 0.