The noose around Gianni Infantino tightens. Michel Platini has now announced that he has filed a criminal complaint against the FIFA President for interfering with the judiciary. And that was already in November 2021 – i.e. at the time when Infantino surprisingly relocated from Switzerland to Qatar.
Platini’s suspension enabled Infantino’s rise to FIFA President
The facts of the case are explosive, the files are dense. Platini accuses the man who once reported to him as UEFA general secretary of having reported to the Swiss public prosecutor an internal payment that led to Platini’s suspension in 2015 and Infantino himself to the FIFA throne.
In fact, the Bern criminal justice authorities, which are notorious for their sluggish way of working, suddenly opened sensational proceedings against Platini and the then FIFA boss Sepp Blatter: Because of a payment of two million francs that Blatter’s FIFA had transferred to Platini in 2011, allegedly as additional payment for previous consulting services. Both top officials were banned, Infantino came out of nowhere and captured the FIFA throne reserved for Platini.
To be clarified: how did the federal prosecutor get their knowledge?
Now Platini unmasks the investigations of the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (BA). Their boss Michael Lauber received a childhood friend of Infantino in July 2015. Immediately afterwards, the federal prosecutors in Bern specifically asked Platini’s Swiss bank about the critical two-million payment. The money house was condemned to strict silence towards the customer. It must therefore be clarified how the BA obtained this specific knowledge.
Now things are getting tight for Infantino. If it turns out that he used the judiciary to sideline Platini and become FIFA boss himself, it would not only contaminate all his own secret meetings with federal prosecutor Lauber and shatter ongoing football proceedings. It would have to lead to his immediate replacement at the top of FIFA.