Criminal investigation in Switzerland may have forced Infantino to seek residency in Qatar
Infantino, according to Switzerland’s Sonntags Blick, has moved his family to the Qatari capital with him
– With friends in European football few and far between, and the authorities in his own country of Switzerland ramping up their criminal investigation into him with the appointment of two special prosecutors, FIFA president Gianni Infantino appears to have decamped to Doha, Qatar.
Infantino, according to Switzerland’s Sonntags Blick, has moved his family to the Qatari capital with him, is renting a house and has two of his daughters in school there.
Sonntags Blick has tracked Infantino’s everyday movements and found that he began spending disproportionately more in Qatar from October of last year and that in November and December last year he operated there almost exclusively, with FIFA insiders confirming he is rarely seen in Zurich.
Instead, the FIFA boss was mostly in the Qatari capital, seen hobnobbing with the Emir of Qatar, enjoying the Formula 1 race in Doha, and being present throughout the Arabian Cup.
The question quickly becomes that if Infantino is not overseeing his 1,000-plus staff from FIFA’s Zurich headquarters, who is?
FIFA maintains that Infantino is still a Swiss resident and pays Swiss taxes. And FIFA did state towards the end of 2021 that its president had elected to spend more time on the road, and in Qatar, as he took the World game to the world.
Having failed to raise new money for FIFA with a failed £25 billion sell-off of rights (pretty much all of them) and an expanded Club World Cup that looks to have been shelved, at least for now, Infantino has put his reputation and his FIFA future behind his latest proposals for a biennial World Cup.
Moving to Qatar – the first time any FIFA president as moved their primary residence and place of work away from the Swiss headquarters – has been argued by FIFA as allowing him to be closer to the nation that will host the next World Cup this November/December.
The reality is that Qatar doesn’t need FIFA’s help to organise the 2022 World Cup. The stadia are ready, so is most of the country’s impressive infrastructure, and Qatar, its local organising committee and its FA, has repeatedly proved that it can run major sports and football events.
The country is packed full with very competent event and media organisers. Indeed, it is currently the first port of call for many confederation organisers seeking a safe venue to get events played.
It will be recalled that a federal prosecutor in Switzerland sometimes opened a criminal investigation into Infantino, after concluding that there were “indications of criminal conduct” in meetings between Infantino and an official overseeing an investigation into soccer corruption.
The investigation follows the resignation last week of Switzerland’s attorney general, Michael Lauber, who stepped down after a federal court upheld allegations that he had lied about meeting with Infantino.
Lauber had been overseeing an investigation of the 2015 corruption scandal that led to criminal indictments against some of the top leaders at FIFA, soccer’s Switzerland-based world governing body.
The scandal led to the ouster of most of FIFA’s senior leadership and paved the way for Infantino’s victory in a special presidential election a year later.
The investigation is a new blow for FIFA, which has tried to turn the corner on the corruption scandal by instituting governance reforms under Infantino.
