Rojas says there is no investigation into Infantino but African questions still linger

By Paul Nicholson

June 21 – FIFA has issued a statement denying that its ethics committee has any investigation proceedings opened against its president Gianni Infantino, though the statement does not mention whether general secretary Fatma Samoura is under investigation.

The statement comes after a report in the Guardian newspaper alleged that its ethics committee had opened an investigation into Infantino before the removal of Swiss prosecutor Cornel Borbely and German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert from FIFA’s investigatory and judicial chambers last month.

Infantino was the primary actor in engineering those changes which have been widely interpreted as being driven by political objectives, with a number of key Infantino supporters, most notably from Africa, having been reported to the Ethics chamber for breaches of rules and corrupt activity.

The FIFA statement raises attention to “two facts:

“ On 8 May 2017, when asked whether there were any open investigations involving the FIFA President, the spokesperson of the then chairman of the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee stated to AFP: “There is no open investigation.”

“Today, Ms María Claudia Rojas, the current chairwoman of the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee, has confirmed that all files have been handed over to her and that there are no open preliminary or investigation proceedings involving the FIFA President.”

FIFA said that it wanted to ensure that the “work of the Ethics Committee is not disrupted by conjecture of any kind.” It is also said it “will refrain from commenting any further on baseless speculation and will instead concentrate on providing concrete information.”

Which begs the question of why make such a big deal out of what it is calling “baseless speculations” and why weren’t some of the root causes of the speculation addressed in that statement?

One of the major issues is the involvement of FIFA’s executive in the CAF elections that saw Madagascar’s Ahmed Ahmed take over from long-reigning Cameroonian Issa Hayatou, While Africa, and perhaps the football world generally, may have had enough of Hayatou, CAF has replaced him with a president who allegedly solicited and received money from banned former official Mohammed Bin Hammam.

Infantino travelled the region prior to the CAF election, mainly visiting supporters of Ahmed. His executive staff led by general secretary Fatma Samoura were even more active in the region, leading to a raft of accusations of electoral interference and abuse of power via development and FIFA grants.

But what is peculiar, perhaps uncomfortable, about this FIFA announcement is that it refuses to acknowledge the African issues or that its ethics function were very well aware of the allegations against various African officials (who were vociferous supporters of Ahmed and Infantino) as complaints had been filed to the investigatory chamber – Insideworldfootball is aware of at least two formal complaints in this regard, as well as another from Oceania alleging corrupt electoral interference to ensure Infantino supporters were engineered into key voting and influential positions.

Infantino may be clear of investigation attention but the underlying causes of those allegations – staff allegedly operating in his name and for his interests – have not been addressed.

Infantino has been through FIFA Ethics scrutiny once already. His acceptance of two flights on private jets during his own election campaign were investigated by FIFA Ethics, as were allegations related to his expenses when he first came to office. The allegations were eventually dismissed, despite what appears to be clear breaches of FIFA’s code of conduct (at the time FIFA would likely have struggled to overcome another leadership crisis so soon after the Blatter crisis and with US investigation on-going).

Samoura has also come under fire following stories of her leveraging African federations as well as using FIFA funds to pay her domestic cleaning bills in Zurich – an expense that was subsequently covered up by FIFA’s new auditors.

It is clear that FIFA’s garden needs constant weeding but unless the roots are treated then the problems will persist. No amount of overgrowth and denials, however well intentioned, will be able to cover up the underlying problems.