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FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s public support for Donald Trump and a peace prize awarded to the US president are the subjects of formal complaints to the global football body’s ethics investigators.
FairSquare, a London-based human rights nonprofit, said on Tuesday it had filed requests for investigations into Infantino’s alleged breaches of FIFA’s statutory duty to be politically neutral.
FIFA said its ethics committee does not comment on potential ongoing cases and could not confirm receiving the complaint.
FIFA’s ethics code calls for a ban from football of up to two years for violating the duty of neutrality, though it is unclear if the case will be taken up.
The current FIFA-appointed ethics investigators and judges are seen by some observers to operate with less independence than their predecessors a decade ago when then-president Sepp Blatter was removed from office.
Infantino has expressed views this year backing Trump and his policies, including suggesting the US president deserved to get the Nobel Peace Prize which he did not win.
The FIFA chief also closely aligned football with the US government ahead of the men’s 2026 World Cup being co-hosted with Canada and Mexico.
The tournament should earn more than $10 billion (€8.6 billion) for FIFA.
Political leaders of all three co-hosts joined Infantino on stage to begin the World Cup tournament draw last Friday in Washington after Trump received the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize.
“The award of a prize of this nature to a sitting political leader is in and of itself a clear breach of FIFA’s duty of neutrality,” FairSquare said in its eight-page complaint.
FIFA has not specified how Infantino created the peace prize last month though people familiar with the process in private conversations said they learned about it through media reports.
“If Mr. Infantino acted unilaterally and without any statutory authority this should be considered an egregious abuse of power,” FairSquare said.
FairSquare has previously challenged FIFA over the human rights record of Saudi Arabia, the 2034 World Cup host, FIFA’s governance standards and the slow-moving investigation into possible statutes breaches relating to teams from Israeli settlements playing in the national football league.
Additional sources • AP
