April 14 – In a move that will fuel further suspicion over his links with FIFA president Gianni Infantino, Switzerland’s federal court has prevented controversial Attorney General Michael Lauber’s (pictured) bid to rejoin investigations of corruption.
The court, in refusing to overturn a lower court’s ruling that Lauber’s closed-door meetings with Infantino raised the appearance of bias, ruled that Lauber recuse himself.
Lauber, who led the Swiss side of the FIFAgate scandal, had been investigating several cases of suspected corruption dating back to 2014 when FIFA was run by Sepp Blatter.
Unofficial dealings between Lauber and Infantino just as the latter was considering seeking the FIFA presidency have led to rumours of collusion between the pair. Le Monde in France claimed a lawyer friend of Infantino met with Lauber in July 2015 – eight months before Infantino landed the FIFA presidency – to find out if he was the target of any corruption probe as he prepared to launch his campaign to take over from Blatter.
Last month, Lauber, who has denied any wrongdoing, was sanctioned for disloyalty, lying and breaching his office’s code of conduct. He also had his pay cut for a year after a watchdog found he repeatedly told falsehoods and broke a prosecutors’ code of conduct.
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