FIFA lawyers claimed UEFA is harassing Gianni Infantino in a court filing urging a Florida judge to deny the European soccer body’s request for evidence discovery about a World Cup private investor plan that has rocked the sport. The 21-page filing to the court in the Southern District of Florida late Monday, seen by The Associated Press, said UEFA was wrong to suggest the FIFA president sought to profit personally from the project that provoked a furor in July and was dropped within days.
UEFA later sought authorization for discovery in three courts, including in Manhattan against Josh Kushner’s New York-based investment firm, and in Miami, where FIFA has an office, aiming to help prepare a criminal complaint against Infantino in Switzerland for alleged financial mismanagement.
President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Infantino’s plan was to create the FFE subsidiary and sell at least 20% of nonprofit FIFA’s future commercial rights for $4.2 billion to investors led by Josh Kushner, the brother of U.S. The secretive plan was revealed on July 28 in media reports and led FIFA’s now-ousted chief operating officer Kevin Lamour to criticize Infantino’s leadership. That follows a call this month by Infantino’s critics at UEFA, North American soccer body CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation that FIFA can afford to pay each of its 211 members a $10 million dividend from cash reserves of about $6 billion. Infantino had offered each member $20 million from the intended $4.2 billion investment by Kushner and others, pending a mid-September deadline to approve the FFE project.
UEFA’s court filings one month ago claimed the value was a “fraudulently off-market price promoted by Infantino for his own benefit”, amid speculation he was eyeing a CEO-like role at the subsidiary on a higher salary than his current $6 million presidential pay package. The FIFA boss’s senior adviser Carlos Cordeiro, a former Goldman Sachs partner, also resigned in protest at the deal, which he said was bad for soccer. FIFA has consistently said the commercial spinoff was intended to accelerate the development of soccer worldwide, outside Europe’s wealthy power base.
