Uefa are preparing a criminal complaint against Gianni Infantino following the Fifa president’s plan to sell off commercial stakes in the World Cup.
A 56-page document, filed by Uefa’s lawyers in a federal court in the United States and seen by The Independent, declares that Uefa are “preparing to bring criminal claims in Switzerland against Infantino” for “criminal mismanagement” following Fifa’s failed Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal.
The filing states that Infantino’s hastily drawn up plan to sell off a 20 per cent stake in the World Cup to private investors for $4.2bn represented an “an absurdly low enterprise value” and accused the Fifa president and others of standing to gain financially in a process that was “neither the product of an open, competitive auction, nor tested by any independent valuer”.
It adds: “Uefa and its 55 members are among Fifa’s most significant stakeholders and their commercial and reputational interests are directly and immediately affected by the permanent alienation of an interest in Fifa’s commercial enterprise arising from the FFE proposal.
“Uefa therefore has a clear interest in initiating Swiss criminal proceedings against Infantino and potentially others involved in the scheme and obtaining the evidence available for use in them.” The document has been filed in Florida, where two of Fifa entities are based, and requests documents for use in the proceedings.
Infantino’s plans, which involved Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner, the brother of US president Donald Trump’s brother-in-law, as a lead investor, collapsed within days last month after Uefa threatened to boycott the World Cup and other Fifa competitions.
Uefa called off its boycott on Wednesday after saying it had received “assurances” that Fifa would not attempt to sell off stakes in its competition again, but European football’s governing body warned Infantino at the start of the month that it was “considering legal action, arbitration, and/or regulatory complaints” following the failed FFE plan.
Infantino has remained in office after apologising for “mistakes” over the proposals, but Kevin Lamour, Fifa’s former chief operating officer who criticised the FFE plan and said Fifa staff had been “deceived” by its president, has since left the global governing body.
Uefa has led calls for Infantino to resign and declared that it had lost confidence in the Fifa president after he scrapped his World Cup sell-off plan. The European governing body led the backlash against the FFE and accused Infantino in a statement of trying to push through a “shabby, backroom, opaque deal”.
More follows