Infantino and his village gang get his prosecutor thrown off the case!

By Tony Attwood

You might recall that for some time Untold has been one of  the very few media outlets in the UK that has seriously covered the investigation into the activities of Fifa President Gianni Infantino.

Then we stopped, because the investigation stopped.

What happened was that Stefan Keller was removed from his position as extraordinary federal prosecutor after Infantino appealed against Keller’s position on the grounds that he could not “guarantee a fair process.”

And to my amazement (which is of course of no consequence, I am just observing the fairground from England), the Swiss Federal Criminal Court (FCC) ruled that Keller had extended the investigation into the Fifa President beyond his remit.

What made the FCC takes this decision was that Lauber questioned an individual close to Infantino over the Fifa President’s use of a private jet during a trip from Suriname to Switzerland.

If you have a good memory you’ll recall we covered that trip in detail and on the basis of the evidence available to us members of the public there is no doubt that Infantino hired the private plane to get him to a meeting that did not exist. He lied in his account, and took the jet because he didn’t fancy an overnight stay in Central America. 

In response the FCC has ruled that “by attempting to look into matters that had nothing to do with his mandate and then publicly raising his own personal suspicions about them without any objective justification, Mr Keller had clearly violated the presumption of innocence and damaged the standing of the FIFA President.”

The investigation into Infantino was supposed to focus on the undocumented conversations between the FIFA President and Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber.  Now, as well as being removed from his position, Keller has been ordered to pay £3,400 in costs.

Although that is a technical victory for Infantino,  the criminal proceedings that were opened in July 2020 in Switzerland against Infantino over dealings between the Fifa President and Lauber and which centre on undocumented meetings that Lauber and Infantino are alleged to have held in 2016 and 2017, are still ongoing.

Stefan Keller has now accused the judges of partiality noting that two of the three magistrates belong to the same political party, the Zurich SVP, which is also the party to which Mr. Infantino belongs. 

Mr Keller has also argued that members of the Federal Criminal Court are due for re-election by parliament this autumn, and his investigation was clearly getting to be very critical of the court’s processes. 

Stefan Keller also criticized the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, saying that key files were never delivered to him.  He added that, “The obstruction of the extraordinary federal prosecutor was probably systematic.”   

Mr Keller can appeal against his disqualification but he has said he is not optimistic about his chances, on the grounds that the appeals procedure does not function independently of the judges who have dismissed him. 

It is also notable that from the start Fifa expressed doubts about Stefan Keller’s qualifications and lodged several complaints with the Federal Criminal Court arguing that he had not respected basic legal standards.

But there is another story here and one that we covered in the article “Compelling evidence that Fifa is corrupt” and which I’ll summarise here.

Sepp Blatter was born in the canton of Valais.  Infantino was born in the canton of Valais.  Lauber was born in the canton of Valais.  Oh yes and Michel Zen-Ruffinen who served as the general secretary of Fifa, from 1998 to 2002 was born in the canton of Valais.

The population of Valais is about one third of a million.  So this is a bit like having all the key players running the whole of Fifa across the entire world, coming from Northumberland.  Or Haringey (home of Tottenham Hotspur).

So the men from one little canton, who run world football, have come up against a prosecutor from outside their little kingdom.  He asks difficult questions, like the question about why a private jet was hired when it was not necessary, at a huge cost to Fifa, and he is now forced out.

Not the best of scenarios.

But something which the English media don’t really like, because their journalists love to go to Fifa events and have a jolly good time.  All the more reason not to buy newspapers or watch international football on TV.

Fifa in crisis

• Why and how Infantino is still happy to promote the Super League.
• “Fifa will not exist in ten years time.” Or maybe even less!