September 14 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino and his legal team are still refusing to show any form of accountability to member associations, stakeholders or even the legal profession over his attempt to sell all FIFA’s competition rights to a private equity backed new business – FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE).
In the US Infantino has failed to provide documents, requested by Democrat Jamie Raskin, as well refusing to respond to a request to appear before the United States House Judiciary Committee. The deadline to produce the files and contact the committee to arrange an interview was August 9.
Reports are that he has made no contact with the Republican controlled committee. Raskin is accusing Infantino of having bribed US president Donald Trump having worked his way into Trump’s inner circle.
In Europe FIFA’s legal committee similarly refused to answer ‘critical questions’ at a meeting from delegates regarding the FFE scandal.
Danish FA (DBU) President Jesper Moller told Reuters he was surprised FFE was not on the agenda, as he again called for Infantino to resign saying that FIFA cannot rebuild its credibility under its present leadership.
“I naturally used the meeting to ask a number of critical questions about the process, which I still consider to have been deeply problematic,” Moller said in a statement.
“I am surprised that FIFA Forward Enterprise has not been discussed by the Legal Committee, which is precisely the body that should be consulted on legal matters concerning FIFA… This would clearly have been a good opportunity for FIFA’s leadership to explain itself.”
“We will continue to push for answers and I am confident that we will get to the bottom of this completely unacceptable matter,” Moller added.
FIFA is an expert at going dark over football’s hottest issues and especially so when they surround its president who cloaks himself with an iron wall of zealous senior staff protection.
UEFA has filed discovery proceedings in the US in three jurisdictions looking for information for a possible legal case in Switzerland against. Infantino has responded through US lawyer Andrew Levender of Dechert, requesting that the discovery proceedings are thrown out.
UEFA similarly filed for discovery against Joshua Kushner of Thrive Capital and the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Thrive were lined up to take the $4.2 billion ownership position in FIFA’s rights that had not been put out to commercial tender.
Kushner has appointed US attorney Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel.
Spiro is one of the US’s leading trial lawyers and has a reputation for a no-holds-barred approach. Quinn Emanuel represented FIFA during the FIFAgate scandal and was instrumental in getting FIFA’s status changed from being viewed as a criminal organisation in the FBI’s to becoming a victim of bribery and corruption.
Even the discovery will inevitably be aggressively resisted and even if granted will likely take months to be fulfilled as process is stalled by Infantino and Kushner’s lawyers.
Granting discovery is also not straightforward, despite this case being clear cut in UEFA’s eyes, US judges are not likely to be moved to get into the detail of a case that will not be seen in their courts. Judges would be more motivated to grant discovery if the Swiss judiciary had opened a criminal case.
According to one legal source in the US, the likelihood that UEFA can build a criminal case in the US does not seem very great because of Trump’s control of the judiciary – a leaf he seems to have taken out of Infantino’s book.
A civil case is more likely as that can be brought by any party.
However, using the argument that Infantino, Thrive and their advisors attempted to defraud FIFA’s member associations (ultimately the owners of FIFA that for many provides the bulk of their revenues) of billions of dollars, then criminal and civil cases could potentially be brought against Infantino and FIFA in multiple jurisdictions around the world.
In 2015 the US Department of Justice issued more than 40 indictments to FIFA administrators for fraud, bribery and racketeering. Ultimately they collected about $200 million from individuals and marketing companies.
Infantino and his co-conspirators are being accused of an attempted multi-billion dollar fraud. This is a whole different scale than the FIFAgate scandal and US DoJ promises to clean up football for the world.
UEFA’s position, which is echoed by pretty much all of football’s stakeholders worldwide is, if there is nothing to hide in the discovery, they why are you trying to hide?
Contact the writer of this story at paul.nicholson@insideworldfootball.com
