FIFA has accused European football’s governing body, UEFA, of waging a “misinformation campaign” and trying to influence the race for its presidency amid a growing governance crisis in the sport. Football’s global governing body urged a court in the United States on Tuesday to reject UEFA’s discovery request linked to FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s controversial investment proposal for rights to the World Cup. Last month, UEFA asked a US federal court for permission to obtain testimony and documents for use in a planned criminal complaint in Switzerland against Infantino over a now-abandoned plan to transfer World Cup commercial rights into a subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE).
In its response, FIFA said UEFA’s brief contained “numerous false or misleading statements about FIFA and Infantino”. The European body said in the legal filing that investors would have paid $4.2bn for a stake in FFE, valuing the business at about $20bn. It said the valuation significantly undervalued FIFA’s commercial rights and alleged it had not been subjected to an open auction or tested by an independent valuer.
Last week, Infantino wrote to all 211 member associations proposing an independent review of the governing body’s decision-making processes. The Swiss administrator is up for re-election in March, and FIFA has alleged that UEFA’s legal filings are an attempt to influence that election.
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