By Andrew Warshaw
April 7 – Despite vehemently insisting it acted in good faith over the sale of Champions League rights to an offshore company after being caught up in the Panama Papers tax haven affair, UEFA had its offices raided on Wednesday by Swiss police searching for evidence of any possible wrongdoing.
In another embarrassing twist involving European football’s governing and the man who signed off the deal, new FIFA president Gianni Infantino, the Swiss attorney general’s office said it requested the raid looking for dealings with Cross Trading, the shady offshore company owned by Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, both under indictment in the United States as part of the FifaGate corruption scandal and who are currently under house arrest in Argentina fighting extradition.
The 2006 contract, co-signed by Infantino when he was UEFA legal director before becoming general secretary, was one of the files leaked from the database of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.
The Swiss attorney-general’s (OAG) office said the search was part of “ongoing criminal proceedings” and had been launched because of “suspicion of criminal mismanagement and … misappropriation”.
“The OAG’s criminal proceedings are in connection with the acquisition of television rights and are at present directed against persons unknown, meaning that for the time being, no specific individual is being targeted by these proceedings,” it added.
UEFA acknowledged that Swiss federal police “acting under a warrant” had visited its offices in Nyon close to Geneva “requesting sight of the contracts between UEFA and Cross Trading/Teleamazonas.”
“Naturally, UEFA is providing the Federal Police with all relevant documents in our possession and will cooperate fully,” the statement said.
UEFA previously said it had no commercial connections to anyone connected with the US probe but has now acknowledged that its previous response was “inaccurate and incomplete.”
“UEFA apologizes for this oversight,” it said on Wednesday, claiming it previously had too little time to study thousands of commercial contracts.
There has been no suggestion that Infantino or anyone at UEFA received bribes or kickbacks. UEFA says it had no knowledge whatsoever of the fact that Cross Trading would end up selling on the rights for three times the price to Ecuadorian broadcaster Teleamazonas.
But questions have been raised about why the deal needed to done through Cross Trading and the money flows once the rights had been secured by the third party off-shore buyer. Wednesday’s police search eerily echoes the raid made on the offices of FIFA last year after which criminal proceedings were opened against Sepp Blatter including suspected mismanagement of undersold World Cup TV rights for the Caribbean region.
In UEFA’s case the rights were sold to Teleamazonas after an “open, competitive, tender process” conducted by TEAM, its exclusive (marketing) agent which conducts the negotiations for the sale of broadcast rights.
“We can also add that the offer made by Teleamazonas was very much the ‘going rate’ for this category of rights in comparable markets in Latin and Central America,” UEFA said adding there had been a tender, competing offers and it would have been “unusual” if it had not accepted the Teleamazonas offer which it said was the best one.
UEFA also stressed that Cross Trading had the exclusive mandate to buy sports TV rights in Europe on behalf of Teleamazonas and said that, at the time, there was no reason to believe there was anything suspicious about it.
Referring to the resale by Cross Trading, UEFA said it has “no knowledge of any bilateral or private financial arrangements between Cross Trading and Teleamazonas. Neither UEFA nor TEAM have ever seen any contract or agreement between Cross Trading and Teleamazonas”.
“There is, we repeat, absolutely nothing in this story which could in any possible way serve to undermine the integrity of either UEFA or Gianni Infantino.”
For his part, Infantino, unwittingly caught up in the affair just when he is endeavouring to stamp his authority on FIFA as the restorer of credibility and transparency, issued yet another statement denying any wrongdoing following the police search at his former employers.
“If my determination to restore football’s reputation was already very strong, it is now even stronger,” said Infantino. “I welcome any investigation conducted into this matter. For the sake of transparency and clarity, it is essential that all elements of this dossier are disclosed, as UEFA has done.
“Based on these documents, it is clear that all contractual matters were conducted properly by UEFA. Should I be required to contribute to bringing further clarification on the matter, I will of course gladly do so. It is in my interest and in the interest of football that everything should come to light.”
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