Infantino heard by two prosecutors in Zurich
The FIFA boss was summoned by the courts to be heard in the context of his secret meetings with Michael Lauber, the former head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Confederation.
Gianni Infantino had to answer questions from two extraordinary prosecutors.
AFP
Gianni Infantino was heard by the two extraordinary prosecutors appointed to take over the investigation into the secret meetings of the boss of the International Football Federation (FIFA) with a former head of the Public Ministry of the Confederation, confirmed one of the two magistrates at AFP.
“I confirm to you that a confrontation hearing took place in the context of the procedure carried out by Dr (Ulrich) Weder and myself. However, I am not commenting on the timing, scope and purpose of this hearing,” Hans Maurer said in an email to AFP, confirming information from the daily newspapers “Le Monde” and “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
The latter specify that Mr. Infantino was heard Tuesday in Zurich, the city where the headquarters of FIFA is located.
Penal procedure
The FIFA President, who is a candidate for his succession for a third term in 2023, has been the subject of criminal proceedings since July 2020 for “incitement to abuse of authority”, “violation of official secrecy” and to “obstructing criminal proceedings”.
Swiss justice accuses him of three secret meetings in 2016 and 2017 with Michael Lauber, then head of the Public Ministry of the Confederation (MPC), feeding suspicions of collusion between the prosecution and FIFA, a civil party in most of the procedures.
The Italian-Swiss (52) assures for his part that it was a question of showing the prosecution “that the new FIFA was a thousand leagues from the old”. The internal justice of the organization he leads cleared him in August 2020.
She had decided to close the case due to the “clear lack of evidence regarding any alleged violation of the code of ethics”.
Seven months of waiting
The investigations of the Swiss justice resumed at the end of 2021, after seven months of paralysis following the recusal in May 2021 of the Swiss prosecutor Stefan Keller.
Former MPC chief Michael Lauber was dismissed in June 2019 from the investigation into a corruption scandal at FIFA, due to his undeclared contacts in 2016 and 2017 with Mr. Infantino.
Very criticized, he ended up resigning a year later, in July 2020, before losing his immunity.
AFP
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