On July 30, the Swiss extraordinary prosecutor Stefan Keller opened criminal proceedings against the president of the International Football Federation (FIFA), Gianni Infantino. This investigation targets the secret meetings, in 2016 and 2017, between the boss of world football and the Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber. Specialist in sports law and professor at the University of Geneva, lawyer Henry Peter returns to The world on the bad patch that FIFA and its leader are going through.
Five years after his predecessor, Sepp Blatter (1998-2015), Gianni Infantino is also the subject of criminal proceedings in Switzerland. Is there a curse hanging over FIFA?
Is it a curse, a fatality? No. It is to be hoped and it is realistic to conceive of a FIFA presidency which is not subject to such turmoil, which therefore is not chronically targeted by criminal proceedings. Such problems are by no means inherent to the function.
Is it systemic? As the umbrella body of the Olympic movement, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has experienced similar problems in the past. But President Thomas Bach has gradually implemented reforms [depuis 2013, travail commencé par ses prédécesseurs]. Nothing is perfect, but the corporate culture is healthy today at the CIO. There has been significant progress. These shortcomings are therefore not a necessary evil within international federations in general, and therefore FIFA in particular.
What is the nature of the problem in FIFA then?
In my opinion, there is a cultural problem, therefore of mentality, and a structural problem, therefore of governance. Sepp Blatter had been forced to implement reforms in an attempt to save himself, before being suspended in 2015 by his ethics committee. Then, the lawyer François Carrard had passed, in 2016, a package of reforms (limit of mandates of the president, transparency concerning salaries, etc.); it was good progress and a realistic compromise given the circumstances.
In February 2016, Mr Infantino arrived claiming that he was going to restore FIFA’s good reputation (thus admitting that it needed it) and put in place the necessary reforms. The problem is that under his presidency we went backwards in terms of good governance; we have partly returned to the Old Regime, that of the Sun King, and through the Blatter era. So nothing has really changed. In 2016, I gave Mr. Infantino the benefit of the doubt; today, I am afraid I no longer have that opinion.
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