By Andrew Warshaw
December 11 – Gianni Infantino’s increasingly bitter war with the Swiss justice authorities over whether he is guilty of corruption has taken another significant twist with a special prosecutor recommending a criminal investigation against the FIFA President for using a private jet in 2017.
Stefan Keller, appointed to investigate former attorney general Michael Lauber’s undocumented meetings with Infantino against whom criminal proceedings were already opened in July, now wants another probe, declaring his enquiries found there were “clear signs of criminally reprehensible behaviour” in relation to a flight from Suriname to Geneva undertaken by Infantino.
A statement by Keller’s office said that “based on the investigations carried out” he was “ of the opinion that a criminal investigation must be opened for unfair management in connection with the use of a private jet.”
Infantino used the jet to get back to Switzerland after visiting member federations in the Caribbean, reportedly so that he could be in time for a meeting with UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin. Except that Ceferin was apparently in Armenia at the time.
Keller’s office said he had sent “the results of his investigations to the federal prosecution office which will deal with the matter with its own resources.”
But according to agency reports, the Swiss federal prosecution office said it had yet to receive Keller’s documents, and confirmed it was “currently not conducting any criminal proceedings against FIFA President Gianni Infantino.”
Ever since Keller announced that criminal proceedings had been launched against Infantino over those questionable Lauber meetings which Infantino has long insisted were entirely above board, FIFA has undertaken an elaborate public relations campaign with a string of strongly-worded statements backing the man at the top.
FIFA’s ethics committee closed its own probe into the matter of the flight in August and just as he has rubbished the criminal investigation opened against him relating to those Lauber meetings, so Infantino was quick to issue another strong defence of his conduct, attacking Keller’s latest accusations as an attempt at character assassination.
Again using FIFA as his route to the media and defense vehicle, Infantino issued a statement on Thursday outlining their intention to take “all necessary legal steps” over Keller’s comments that were described as “both malicious and defamatory in nature and demonstrates his extreme bias.”
“Now, many months into his investigation and having established precisely nothing problematic about these meetings with the former Federal Attorney General, as FIFA always predicted would be the case, and having not even asked to hear the FIFA President since his investigation was announced last July, the “special prosecutor” has today issued an official “media release” saying that the FIFA President should now be investigated for something else!”
“Neither FIFA nor its President have ever been informed of these new spurious allegations and they are therefore unable to comment on them, which is probably the intention of the “special prosecutor”.
“The method of “special prosecutor” Stefan Keller to accuse and defame by publishing media releases without justification borders on character assassination and is rejected in the strongest possible terms by FIFA and its President. FIFA and its President will obviously take all necessary legal steps and remedies to put an end to these baseless and ill-intentioned accusations.”
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