Swiss criminal justice has been governing chaos for a year. Chief prosecutor Michael Lauber was suspended from soccer trials by his own authority because of his mysterious secret meetings with FIFA boss Gianni Infantino, then the globally recognized summer fairy tale process broke out in March, and impeachment proceedings against the federal prosecutor have been underway since June. At the same time, a special investigator, Stefan Keller, is examining whether criminal proceedings against Lauber and Infantino should be opened: due to violation of official secrets and the instigation to do so.
Now, all of a sudden, Lauber’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office (BA) is developing a high level of activity: It is against Infantino’s predecessor Sepp Blatter, whom she had overthrown in September 2015. At that time, thanks to discreetly supplied information, the BA opened criminal proceedings against Blatter. It is about a payment of two million francs to the then FIFA vice and UEFA president Michel Platini. Both explain that the money went to former French advisory services to Fifa, but the BA senses unfaithfulness to the business. Platini has recently been listed as a suspect because of “assistance”.
Since 2015, not only has the summer fairy tale (and presumably other FIFA procedures) been messed up, there has also been calm when it comes to leaves. The BA now invited the 84-year-old to three accusations three times, within 32 days – only the last one, on September 1, dealing with the deal with Platini. On August 6, Blatter was asked about a 2010 FIFA Fifa loan to the Trinidad / Tobago Football Association, and on July 30, he had to declare a previously unknown situation in Bern: It was about a private jet flight by Caribbean scandal official Jack Warner for $ 365,000 that FIFA had paid.
This procedure is extremely explosive. A private jet flight at Fifa costs in 2017 has recently also brought Infantino to the brink – especially since he even let the supervisory board lie to justify his trip according to the current file situation. It is a flight affair that special investigator Keller already has. If the BA shows with its new Blatter procedure that it considers non-compliant charter flights at FIFA costs to be relevant to the penalty: What does that mean for a charter flight that was even justified with incorrect information?
The Causa Blatter looks like this: In 2007, the then FIFA Vice Warner to Nelson Mandela had blown to the Cape; South Africa campaigned for the 2010 World Cup. Back in Trinidad, Warner dropped the bill. When Fifa blocked him for life because of corruption in 2011, according to Blatter, she helped Warner’s starving association in Trinidad and paid the debt.
The Causa Infantino looks like this: The Fifa boss flew home from Suriname in April 2017, when a scheduled scheduled flight was delayed, with a jet that was booked and delivered as quickly as possible. This trip, allegedly costing around CHF 200,000, was justified by Tomas Vesel, the head of governance, with an urgent business appointment that never existed: a meeting with the Uefa president. It was on this day that Aleksander Ceferin stayed in distant Armenia and stayed there. Infantino and Stab knew when leaving Surinam that there was no date with Ceferin the next day.
The Fifa regulations, which have to protect the money of the global football community, do not provide for cost takeovers like for Warner’s luxury trip to the Cape, nor does Infantino’s desire for six-digit special expenses to be home hours earlier. However, in his case, FIFA also tightened its ethical rules and ordered “independent” supervisors to pay for governance offenses. Governance boss Vesel (Slovenia) receives a quarter of a million euros a year in his part-time job, a multiple of his professional income in Ljubljana: he remains silent about the invented meeting to this day. When asked whether it had lied to Vesel with this information, FIFA only evasively stated that the flight was in compliance with the rules. Which she conceded at the same time: This flight was a case for the supervision.
The two flight affairs are now like fetuses in FIFA. The BA, which is therefore taking action against Blatter, would have problems of bias in the Infantino case – but that’s what the special investigator is there for. When looking at the matting between BA and Fifa, Stefan Keller should not fall behind Lauber’s authority.
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