Two extraordinary prosecutors will once again audition, Tuesday, January 10, the president of the International Football Federation, prosecuted since 2020 for “incitement to abuse of authority, the violation of the secrecy and the obstacle to criminal action “.
by Rémi Dupré
Barely returned from Qatar, where he supervised what he described as “the most beautiful World Cup in history”, Gianni Infantino is back on the legal ground. As MO12345lemonde learned and the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), the Suisso-Italian President of the International Football Federation (FIFA) will be re-been re-invented on Tuesday, January 10, by Zurich, by extraordinary prosecutors Ulrich Weder and Hans Maurer. The 52 -year -old had already been auditioned in the spring of 2022 by the two magistrates.
This new interrogation is part of the criminal procedure opened in July 2020 against Mr. Infantino, elected at the head of FIFA in February 2016, for “incitement to the abuse of authority, to the violation function secret and hindrance to criminal action “. Contacted by MO12345lemonde, FIFA did not wish to comment “as long as the case is underway”.
For his part, Mr. Maurer confirms the “interrogation” outfit without deciding on “the moment, the extent and the goal of this hearing”. Elected officials in December 2021 by the Swiss Federal Assembly, the two extraordinary prosecutors are trying to shed light on three secret meetings (without minutes), in 2016 and 2017, between Mr. Infantino and the ex-Swiss-general prosecutor Michael LAUBER , in charge of surveys related to FIFA between 2015 and 2019 and resigning in 2020.
To do this, they will confront, Tuesday, the often contradictory versions of seven defendants within the framework of this procedure: Gianni Infantino; Mr. LAUBER; his ex-spokesperson, André Marty; A childhood friend of Mr. Infantino, the prosecutor of Haut-Valais Rinaldo Arnold; The ex-legal director of FIFA, Marco Villiger; The former federal prosecutor Olivier Thormann; and the anti -corruption prosecutor Cédric is remanded.
This “confrontation” is essential for Mr. Infantino: he hopes a classification of the criminal procedure before his re -election scheduled for a new mandate, during the FIFA congress in Kigali, in March.
During their investigation, the magistrates heard several witnesses, such as the ex-federal procureurs Joël Pahud and Markus Nyffenegger as well as the former Copatron of the FIFA Ethics Committee, Cornel Borbély.
Against the background of suspicions of collusion between FIFA and Swiss prosecutors, MM. Weder and Maurer seek to find out what was the content of the discussions during the incriminated secret meetings. In a disciplinary report in March 2020, the surveillance authority of the public prosecutor of the Confederation (AS-MPC) specified that “the reasons for the meetings that Mr. LAUBER proposed proved to be unfounded”. In 2020, the Federal Administrative Court (TAF) concluded that “the Attorney General deliberately hid the truth at the AS-MPC during his hearing of November 12, 2018 and that he consciously you meet the third meeting with the president of FIFA “.
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