Gianni Infantino: Uefa pursuing criminal legal proceedings against Fifa president – BBC Sport
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Uefa preparing criminal legal action against Infantino
Image source: Getty Images
Image caption: The relationship between Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin (left) and Fifa president Gianni Infantino (right) has worsened in recent months
By Daniel Austin, BBC Sport senior journalist
Published 1 hour ago
Uefa is preparing criminal legal proceedings against Fifa president Gianni Infantino over the now scrapped plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup and its other competitions to private investors.
Documents seen by BBC Sport show an application has been made by European football’s governing body requesting access to evidence and documents for use in proceedings in Switzerland against the embattled president himself, who Uefa accuses of "criminal mismanagement".
Shortly after this summer’s World Cup, Infantino proposed creating a new company, Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE), which would have sold off stakes in Fifa’s football competitions to private investors. The plan was scrapped after widespread backlash.
In the application for evidence, Uefa claims that Infantino engineered the plan "in order to enrich himself and the potential private investors."
"In truth, it was a vehicle for Infantino and that small circle to acquire a permanent stake in and otherwise profit from Fifa’s most valuable assets to the detriment of Fifa, its members, and other parties within the football family," Uefa’s application says. "Infantino pushed the plan through internal Fifa approval only days earlier at a hastily convened meeting where a limited number of Fifa’s management officials and employees – some of whom had never heard of the plan – were given mere hours to sign off on an unprecedented multi-billion dollar scheme."
BBC Sport has approached Infantino and Fifa for comment.
Uefa also claims that the valuation of the stakes to be sold were not independently verified and would have been offered too cheaply, calling the proposed sale "a fraudulently off-market price promoted by Infantino for his own benefit".
The application adds: "Under the terms Infantino announced, those investors stood to acquire a permanent financial interest in Fifa’s commercial arm for $4.2bn, implying an absurdly low enterprise value of only approximately $20bn, a figure that was neither the product of an open, competitive auction, nor tested by any independent valuer."
In the application, Uefa is applying to a court in Florida to attempt to access files held by two Fifa businesses – Fifa Americas and FWC2026 – to be used to pursue the criminal charges in Switzerland at a later stage. The two businesses are based in Florida.
Uefa claims that its 55 member nations would have potentially been harmed by the sell-off plan, and that it may pursue criminal proceedings against other Fifa officials as well as Infantino.
"Uefa and other interested parties are preparing to bring criminal claims in Switzerland against Infantino and possibly other Fifa officials and advisors for criminal mismanagement," the application states.
