That’s all you need to know #FIFAcrime and Gianni Infantilo.
That is all you need to know.
That’s all you need to know.
All you need to know.
That’s enough. pic.twitter.com/3mAy03qid3— SPORT & POLITICS (@JensWeinreich) March 16, 2023
In the tweet above, I claimed that there is nothing more you need to know than this short video tells about the FIFA Congress in Kigali, where Gianni Infantilo has just been confirmed in office by acclamation. You really don’t need to know much more. Except that Infantilo promised Congress at least $11 billion “and then some” in the current World Cup cycle through 2026. And that his dictator friend Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, called for the separation of sport and politics. Infantilo and Kagame are both puppets of other despots, but more on that later. But maybe you should know that and think about it … why world sport has one World Anti-Corruption Agency Needs (WACA), I’ve been trying to explain for nearly two decades. Well then, once again an updated psalm, if you need proof, you will find thousands in this theater via the search function.
Speaking of WACA. Regulars will of course remember my survey of IOC members and federation presidents at the Copenhagen Olympic Congress in 2009. Infantilo’s predecessor and compatriot was of course also there:
The question of whether multi-billion dollar sports associations and their highest representatives operate in legal vacuums has been debated among corruption fighters for ages. The spectacular and ongoing criminal proceedings of the US judiciary in the FIFA complex have not fundamentally changed that – it was and is a notable exception. Those primarily responsible for the criminal business in sport are still difficult to hold accountable. At the interfaces between politics, show biz and big business, such dubious figures as FIFA Presidents have set themselves up very comfortably. That was with the demonstrably corrupt Brazilian Jean-Marie Faustin Goedefroid de Havelange (†) yes, with Havelange’s successors, who both come from the same small Swiss mountain valley, even from the immediate vicinity, it’s no different.
The FIFA President Joseph Blatterwho grew up in Visp in the Valais, got off all the complaints, criminal investigations and affairs during his tenure from 1998 to 2015 (and thereafter) lightly, also because the International Federation of Football Association (FIFA) went to great lengths to influence politicians and the judiciary. Pleasure trips to the soccer World Cup, for example, were organized for Swiss judges and public prosecutors time and time again. Best tickets, best flights, best hotels. The full program. One hand washes the other. feeding that’s what corruption experts call it.
Blatter’s successor Gianni Infantilo (52), who grew up in Brig im Valais, has not yet been proven to have taken tens of millions of dollars in bribes (like Havelange once did), but the list of his affairs and legal involvements is longer than that of any FIFA president before him. Infantilo became president in Zurich in February 2016, in June 2019 he was confirmed in office in Paris – and this Thursday he will receive a license for the next four years by acclamation in Rwanda’s capital Kigali. The tenure of FIFA President Infantilo, who has also been a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 2020, is pure crime. And will remain so.
Even under Blatter, FIFA began to invest enormous sums in law firms and lobbyists in order not to become a criminal organization in the context of the US criminal investigation RICO-Act to be explained, but to gain victim status. Tens of millions flowed into this every month, even under Infantilo. For FIFA it was about everything, so not getting crushed. The operation was successful and FIFA has since been awarded more than $200 million in fines paid by confessed and convicted football crooks, some of whom were former FIFA officials.
In Switzerland, the circumstances in which Infantino was able to switch from UEFA General Secretary from Nyon to the helm of FIFA in 2015/16 have long since attained the status of a state affair. The longtime federal prosecutor Michael Lauber did it cost you the job. Everything indicates that Infantino, with the help of his childhood friend Rinaldo Arnold, currently senior public prosecutor in Valais, was informed by the federal prosecutor’s office about the criminal investigations into the FIFA complex that had been initiated by the American judiciary and that made headlines around the world by May 2015 at the latest. Infantino may have also made a deal with the US judiciary in New York in autumn 2015. At that time was against the then UEFA President Michael Platini already under investigation (Platini was acquitted last year), which Platini has good reason to believe is part of a conspiracy by Infantino and the Swiss judiciary to prevent his ascension to the FIFA throne.
Platini’s head of administration, Infantino, became FIFA president instead of Platini. And his secret meetings with the highest Swiss judicial officer Lauber were only just beginning, although Infantino himself was under investigation because of old UEFA business. Meetings, the content of which the gentlemen absolutely cannot remember, for which documents were even destroyed in the federal prosecutor’s office, about which Lauber lied during his interrogations – and which, from 2016, also revolved around the World Cup in Qatar.
Only a few days ago, a rather subordinate case against Infantino was dropped, although the FIFA President had also told the untruth. It is doubtful whether the much more important investigation into incitement to abuse of office, breach of official secrecy and favoritism is actually still being pursued seriously. The Swiss judiciary traditionally protects sports officials more than investigating. In the judicial scandal surrounding Lauber and Infantilo, a special investigator was recalled because he was too interested in the facts. Two retirees who have tremendous experience in procedural settings have been reactivated in his place.
The recent revelation may change that. According to the files of a former CIA agent who worked for Qatar with his own company from 2011/2012 and is said to have collected several hundred million dollars there, Infantilo and Lauber were bugged at their secret meetings. That’s hardly surprising if you know where the gentlemen met for a conversation, the content of which they unfortunately completely forgot: Im Schweizerhof in Bern, a building owned by Qatar and also housing the Qatari embassy.
From the company files Global Risk Advisors of the former CIA agent Kevin Chalker, which were introduced for the first time in a court case in the USA a few years ago, various media have now published explosive details. Now it was her The New Zurich Times, which presents new documents, according to which the Swiss federal prosecutor may have been wiretapped and perhaps even blackmailed. The usual denials come from Qatar, as has been the case with all revelations for more than a decade: they are all false claims. A number of criminal investigations and proceedings involving important Qatari officials have already been buried in this way.
Against the background of the most recent publication, both the absurdly bad investigations by Lauber’s authority and Infantilo’s Qatar policy could be explained. Blackmail? But they are certainly not victims. A secret service action on Swiss soil against the highest criminal prosecutor in Switzerland would be punishable. It would be an attack on the sovereignty of the country that has offered a safe haven to more than 60 international sports associations, including very wealthy corporations such as FIFA, IOC and UEFA, for at least a hundred years. Will Switzerland accept that from Qatar? Is there really an investigation?
These questions alone will decide whether Gianni Infantilo will be presiding. If the judiciary continues to mate and do nothing, Infantilo will be confirmed in office for another four years in 2027. At least. With the support of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and their vassals in Asia, Africa and America (also in large parts of Europe), he dominates the scene more confidently than Joseph Blatter once did. Infantilo has long since submitted to Africa’s football structure, a FIFA branch office governs here, for a long time by the FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura directed, which collects millions, but remains overwhelmed in terms of content.
For the time being, Infantilo continues undeterred, he fakes and lies, irritates with clumsy performances, basically tells nonsense, changes World Cup schedules (2022) and entire tournament regulations (2026) at will, invents new absurd tournaments and feels great in the circle of the Despots who rule world football. The latest small revelation came from Scandinavian journalists on Wednesday, Jan Jensen and Andreas Selliaas, which show that Infantino, who is said to have moved from Doha to the tax haven of Zug, may not even live in Zug. If true, it would be a criminal offence. Millions of dollars in tax evasion. Here, too, the judiciary would be required.
Basically, the entire Infantino era is proof that this degenerate branch of international sports associations can only be tackled with a globally operating agency. About the old idea of a World Anti-Corruption Agency (WACA), which I have repeatedly addressed since 2006, in many texts, contributions and presentations, often together with Jens Sejer Andersen at Play the Game, has been seriously debated in political circles since 2022. Since Grit Hartmann last year for the Green MEPs Viola von Cramon wrote a dossier about it. The idea is gaining more and more influential advocates. There will soon be more interesting elaborations on what a WACA could look like.
The current events in FIFA and in the IOC’s sphere of influence prove that the time is ripe to finally restrict structurally legal vacuums.
VvC-WACA-Full-study
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