By Paul Nicholson
August 10 – It has been a busy few days of letter sending by FIFA and its president Gianni Infantino who have scrambled to inform FA presidents their version of the circumstances surrounding the criminal investigation into Infantino’s meetings with the Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber.
Insideworldfootball has copies of both letters, sent August 6 and August 8.
Infantino has long-dismissed the accusations of undocumented secret meetings with Lauber as irrelevant and it being perfectly normal for a FIFA president to speak with a country’s senior prosecutor. But with the commencement of the criminal investigation, what was, perhaps arrogantly, considered by Infantino and FIFA as an irrelevance, has suddenly become a full blown corruption and integrity crisis.
In a letter dated August 6 to all FIFA member association presidents, sent on FIFA headed paper, Infantino says he “would like to clearly and accurately explain the situation to you”. The lengthy two-page letter is more interesting for its lack of explanation of the criminal complaint than what it does explain.
Two days after Infantino’s letter, FIFA general secretary Fatma Samoura and deputy general secretary Alasdair Bell, followed up with their own letter to FIFA member association presidents – referencing Infantino’s letter – and “categorically” saying there is no case for Infantino to answer.
FIFA, as Bell has previously pointed out, are not under criminal investigation. But their president is. That the institution has rushed so quickly and aggressively to build the personal defence of the president raises major integrity questions over how far the president has ‘become’ the organisation, rather than in the service of it.
It also, perhaps inadvertently, refocuses attention on the alleged criminal malfeasance of individuals within FIFA and the protection they are being afforded by an organisation that doesn’t seem to have reformed itself when it comes to protecting its own in the face of criminal charges.
Infantino in his letter tells federation presidents that “these meetings (with Lauber) were in no way secret and most certainly not illegal”, saying that he went “in order to offer our full support and assistance in connection with the on-going investigations”.
Obviously nothing wrong with that but the issue that precipitated the criminal investigation was why there was collective amnesia with him and Lauber over the meetings and why were they not documented. They are meetings that have brought about the downfall of Lauber and still haven’t been properly explained – and does it really take three meetings to tell him “we are on your side and will help in any way we can?”
Infantino talks about “some anonymous complaints” filed against me and that “we can only speculate as to why they were filed and who is behind them.” But surely that isn’t the point. FIFA has its own whistleblower line, the point of which is encourage reporting of serious breaches. The issue has to be the severity of the complaints and not whether they were filed anonymously – and in this case severe enough to open a criminal complaint against Infantino.
To recap the charges Infantino is dismissing as frivolous, they cover “abuse of public office (Article 312 of the Swiss Criminal Code), breach of official secrecy (Article 320 of the Swiss Criminal Code), assisting offenders (Article 305 of the Swiss Criminal Code) and incitement to these acts. Additional criminal acts and the commencement of further proceedings remain reserved.”
Infantino talks of the damage the charges have caused to himself and FIFA “despite the fact that the anonymous complaints have no merit whatsoever. In that regard, no serious elements or factual grounds for the opening of a criminal investigation have been presented and the matter was opened without even consulting FIFA or myself first in order to ask for an explanation.”
The FBI didn’t ask the FIFA president or FIFA when, with their proxies in Swiss law enforcement, they marched into the Baur au Lac Hotel in Zurich on the eve of the FIFA Congress in 2015 to arrest the original FIFA Seven. Do law enforcement now need the approval of FIFA’s president to open criminal investigation into allegedly corrupt individuals and institutions?
Infantino does nothing in his letter to explain the charges against him or why they might be nonsense.
The letter from Samoura and Bell is similarly unrevealing in terms of the specific charges but points to FIFA’s own elaborate PR handling of the crisis and the QandA it had with itself (published on its website) and a link to the press conference last week led by Bell that poured scorn on the Swiss justice system in general and the criminal investigation into Infantino specifically.
“We categorically reject any suggestion of wrongdoing by the FIFA President. Furthermore, and since there is absolutely nothing to hide, we will of course cooperate fully with this investigation.”
Doubtless the Swiss criminal investigators will be encouraged by this and the sudden return of memory for what was truthfully discussed in the undocumented but not-secret meetings.
Infantino says in his letter that the criminal investigation “only motivates me to do even more to make football better moving forward”. In light of what we are currently observing that is a chilling threat.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1713905854labto1713905854ofdlr1713905854owedi1713905854sni@n1713905854osloh1713905854cin.l1713905854uap1713905854