June 12 – Swiss parliamentarians have called for an extraordinary federal prosecutor to examine three criminal complaints against under-fire attorney general Michael Lauber who is somehow still clinging to his position.
It is being reported in Switzerland that all three relate to the undocumented informal meetings between Lauber and FIFA President Gianni Infantino rather than the botched investigation by Lauber’s office into the 2006 World Cup tax fraud affair.
Two of the complaints have apparently been submitted by an unnamed lawyer and the third from anonymous sources.
Last month lawmakers voted to launch impeachment proceedings against Lauber who has denied any wrongdoing but in March was sanctioned for disloyalty, lying and breaching his office’s code of conduct. He also had his pay cut for a year after a watchdog group found he repeatedly told falsehoods and broke a prosecutors’ code of conduct.
Infantino has not been accused of any wrongdoing and FIFA has been keen to stress that, far from being a party to corruption, he is trying to weed it out.
Requests for an extraordinary federal prosecutor to get involved opens another front in what is being dubbed Lauber-Gate.
His task would be to examine the three criminal charges in order to determine whether the conditions for opening a criminal investigation are met.
Crucially, the opening of criminal proceedings could have serious consequences for Infantino. If a special prosecutor is installed, the FIFA Ethics Committee would have no other option than to suspend Infantino, temporarily at least, according to its own statutes.
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