FIFA claims harassment of Infantino by European soccer body UEFA in filing to Florida court

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, and 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 asked for authorization of discovery with three courts — including in Manhattan, against Josh Kushner’s New York-based investment firm, and Miami, where FIFA has an office base — aiming to help prepare a criminal complaint against Infantino in Switzerland for financial mismanagement.

“UEFA’s conduct demonstrates that its [court filing] was made in bad faith and for the purpose of harassment,” lawyers for FIFA argue in the document.

The filing also notes the Nov. 18 deadline for potential candidates to enter the FIFA presidential election contest next March in Morocco, where Infantino plans to seek a fourth and final term in office through 2031.

“This court should reject any attempt to influence FIFA’s presidential election based on these grounds,” FIFA lawyers wrote in the filing Monday.

UEFA led a global backlash to the FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) plan and is preparing an election challenge to Infantino, who had seemed set to win unopposed until creating the biggest crisis of his near 11-year presidency.

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. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

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 eyed a CEO-like role at the subsidiary on a higher salary than his current $6 million presidential pay package.

FIFA lawyers claimed UEFA “falsely asserts that Mr. Infantino sought to have a personal financial interest in the FFE project.”

The secretive plan was revealed July 28 by media reports and led FIFA’s now-ousted chief operating officer Kevin Lamour to criticize Infantino’s leadership. The FIFA boss’s senior adviser Carlos Cordeiro, a former Goldman Sachs partner, also resigned in protest at the deal he said was bad for soccer.

Infantino later apologized for errors in how the sell-off plan was handled, and has since offered to open an independent external review of the soccer body’s governance.

FIFA has consistently said the commercial spinoff was intended to accelerate development of soccer worldwide, outside the wealthy power base of Europe.

Infantino open to pay members more cash from FIFA reserves

In a separate development Monday, Infantino wrote to the 211 member federations of FIFA accepting it could pay them more from cash reserves.

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 the 211 members a $10 million dividend from its 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.

An Oct. 15 meeting of the 37-member FIFA Council, to be chaired by Infantino in Zurich, is set to debate proposals on finance and governance as he seeks to manage fallout from the divisive World Cup sell-off plan.