UEFA is preparing to bring criminal proceedings in Switzerland against Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, over his abandoned plan to sell a stake in world football’s most valuable asset to private investors.

The intention emerged on Thursday not from a press release but from legal filings lodged in the United States, obtained by several news organisations. Infantino has not been charged with anything, and no complaint has yet been filed in Switzerland.

What UEFA says it is contemplating

In a document running to roughly 60 pages, UEFA’s lawyers state that UEFA and its counsel are contemplating a Swiss criminal proceeding against Infantino, and possibly other FIFA officials and advisers, for criminal mismanagement under Article 158 of the Swiss Criminal Code, together with any further charges the evidence supports.

Article 158 is not a fraud provision in the ordinary sense. It covers a person entrusted with managing another party’s assets who damages those assets through a breach of that duty. It matters here because FIFA is a not-for-profit association with 211 member federations, and its officers manage assets that belong, in principle, to those members rather than to the organisation’s leadership. UEFA’s 55 associations are among them.

The filings frame the alleged injury in those terms: damage to FIFA’s reputation, its governance authority and its commercial relationships, arising from what the lawyers describe as the secretive structuring, valuation, financing and marketing of the transaction.

The deal that was dropped

The proposal was to sell a stake in a new subsidiary, FIFA Forward Enterprise, which would run FIFA’s commercial events including the World Cup. Thrive Capital Management, the New York investment firm founded by Joshua Kushner — younger brother of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law — was to be the anchor investor, paying $4.2 billion for a 20 per cent stake.

UEFA’s central contention is about that number. Its lawyers argue the valuation was implausibly low for what was being sold, and the filings raise the possibility that the price was a fraudulently off-market one promoted by Infantino for his own benefit. That is an allegation being advanced to justify obtaining documents, not a finding by any court.

Infantino dropped the plan on 1 August after opposition from UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and Concacaf, and the threat of a boycott.

Why a Swiss case is being built in American courts

The most instructive part of this story is procedural. FIFA is headquartered in Zurich, and any criminal complaint would be filed there. But the documents UEFA wants — the valuation work, the internal analyses, the correspondence about how the deal was put together — sit with American banks and an American investment firm.

So UEFA has gone to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking discovery from Thrive Capital, Joshua Kushner and JP Morgan, and to a district court in southern Florida seeking authorisation for discovery in a foreign proceeding against FIFA itself, which has offices in the Miami suburb of Coral Gables.

That is a well-established route. US law allows a party to obtain evidence located in America for use in proceedings abroad, and it is frequently used precisely because American discovery is broader than most European equivalents. The practical effect is that UEFA can assemble a documentary record before deciding whether to file in Switzerland at all — and that the filings themselves became public, which a sealed Swiss complaint would not have.

UEFA’s lawyers had already served document preservation notices on Infantino and other FIFA executives, warning them of possible action.

The boycott that was suspended

Earlier this week UEFA provisionally stepped back from its threat to withdraw European teams from FIFA competitions, saying it had received assurances that there would be no future attempt to sell a stake in FIFA. The suspension covers the coming season, including the Women’s Under-20 World Cup, the Under-17 World Cup and the Women’s Under-17 World Cup.

The word doing the work there is provisionally. UEFA has withdrawn the sporting threat while keeping the legal one, which leaves it with leverage that costs its own member associations nothing in fixtures or revenue. Whether it ever files in Switzerland may depend on what the American discovery produces.

FIFA has been approached for comment by several outlets. Infantino has previously said FIFA will continue to fight corruption in football and cooperate with authorities.

Sources

Associated Press; ESPN; Sky News; ITV News; legal filings in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York and a district court in southern Florida, as reported by those outlets.