FIFA boss Infantino complains about opponents: “Poor, jealous and corrupt people!”

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Now it’s official. The criminal case against former federal prosecutor Michael Lauber (57) and co-suspect due to the secret meetings with FIFA president Gianni Infantino (53) has been discontinued. That’s not surprising. The shutdown was announced weeks ago. The investigations have refuted the suspicion that the Federal Public Prosecution Service was instrumentalized by the World Football Association, the two special investigators say.

In a statement published on Thursday, the world football association Fifa was smug. The outcome of this research is of course not surprising at all: “The only surprising thing is that it took so long to arrive at this result, which was so obvious in advance.”

“If people had even a little dignity…”

At the same time, the FIFA president is quoted as saying: “This is a complete, clear and obvious victory for me, for the new FIFA and for justice!”

But FIFA president Infantino won’t let it go. He immediately launches into a verbal barrage of blood: “It is now clear to everyone that the accusations against me were just desperate attempts by poor, jealous and corrupt people to attack my reputation.”

And further: “If these people had even a modicum of dignity, they should at least have the decency to apologize for their actions and the harm they have caused.” However, FIFA leaves open in its statement who exactly he is referring to. Even when asked, the association did not want to go into further detail.

Lauber must pay part of the procedural costs

In addition to Lauber, Valais public prosecutor Rinaldo Arnold and other people were involved in the proceedings. Because they did not record the meetings, two defendants from the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (BA) must bear part of the legal costs.

Former federal prosecutor Lauber will pay one-seventh of the costs, the extraordinary public prosecutors appointed for the procedure, Hans Maurer and Ulrich Weder, announced on Thursday. The former senior federal prosecutor, Olivier Thormann, must take fourteenth place. The federal treasury will pay the rest. The special investigators do not provide exact amounts.

Maurer and Weder investigated violations of official secrecy, abuse of office and the facilitation or incitement of these crimes. It involved informal meetings with Infantino and other FIFA representatives in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The initial suspicion was mainly aroused by the absence of minutes of the meetings by the BA, as the special investigators announced. In addition, several participants spoke about the topics discussed and about the existence of the meetings in general. Furthermore, the temporal links between the meetings and the CA’s procedural steps helped to refute the initial suspicion.

Lauber had to resign

The investigation found that a July 2015 meeting between Lauber, Arnold and then BA media director André Marty was not about the FIFA process, but rather about Arnold’s interest in a BA position.

Three meetings with Infantino and other football officials did not go beyond general comments about the BA’s FIFA procedures. FIFA did not instrumentalize the BA, the special investigators wrote.

FIFA said Infantino has always acted “absolutely correctly and lawfully”. Lauber always said he couldn’t remember the meetings. Ultimately, he had to resign in 2020 due to possible inconsistencies in the BA proceedings against FIFA. (SDA/dba)

Source:Blick