FIFA chief Infantino claims he has ‘nothing to hide’ from prosecutors

FILE – FIFA president Gianni Infantino gestures as he speaks during the sign memorandum of understanding with World Health Organization (WHO) aimed at promoting and protecting public health globally through football, on October 4, 2019 in Geneva. (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP)

Gianni Infantino has insisted that he had “nothing to hide” in a letter to member federations of football’s global governing body FIFA despite Swiss prosecutors launching a criminal probe against him.

In the letter, sent on Friday and seen by AFP, FIFA chief Infantino tells the body’s 211 members that there were no “factual grounds for the opening of a criminal investigation” which was announced last week.

The special prosecutor has been investigating suspected collusion between Infantino and Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber, who resigned last month over his handling of a corruption investigation targeting FIFA.

Infantino and Lauber are said to have held a series of secret meetings in 2016 and 2017, but the FIFA head said the meetings were about restoring “public trust in our institution” after a series of scandals.

He claims that those meetings “were in no way secret and most certainly not illegal”.

“I went to these meetings with the most senior law officer in the country in order to offer our full support and assistance in connection with the ongoing investigations because FIFA has an interest and is a damaged party in these investigations,” Infantino wrote.

Speaking to AFP, Infantino’s lawyer David Zollinger said that since the announcement of the investigation his client has not received “any information” from the prosecutor and “has not been summoned” to any hearings.

A former prosecutor himself, Zollinger was a member of the supervisory authority of the Swiss public prosecutor’s office — which oversaw Lauber — between 2011 and 2016.

Zollinger denies any conflict of interest, saying that his last meetings at the supervisory authority “took place in June and July of 2016 and at that time no one was aware of the meetings between Lauber and Infantino”.