As we reported and predicted earlier in our article https://fifacolonialism.com/swiss-prosecutor-whose-wife-is-a-uefa-employee-noose-tightens-around-infantinos-neck/ the Swiss Justice System last Monday, knocked out the criminal corruption case against former members of the German FA (DFB) on the technicality of being time-barred.
The criminal indictments were in relation to a CHF 10 million bribe paid out to Asian FIFA Executive committee members by DFB, to outrightly purchase their votes that allowed Germany to win the hosting rights to the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
Off the hook: Niersbach, Zwanziger and Schmidt.
Whilst the implosion of this case was highly anticipated, based in part on the advanced age of the indictees and their high susceptibility to the COVID-19 virus, which meant they could not be safely brought to trial, the 2nd and more plausible reason was that FIFA boss Gianni Infantino went out of his way and directly inferred in the cases, causing this one in particular to collapse.
Infantino did this through his childhood friend Rinaldo Arnold, who is also the Valais prosecutor, and who introduced him to Bern AG Michael Lauber, the man charged with the investigation and prosecution of these cases.
Swiss judicial investigators had discovered that both Lauber and Infantino had at least 3 undocumented, secret meetings which eventually got Lauber sanctioned with an 8% deduction in salary, which he has proceeded to appeal.
Elsewhere, Lauber somehow managed to sneak in a 4-year extension of his tenure as the AG in a tight Parliamentary vote late last year despite questions already existing about his complicity in shoddy dealings with football.
Conspired to defeat Swiss justice: Infantino, Lauber and Arnold.
Most poignant and incontrovertible was the Swiss courts ruling that forced Lauber and two of his subordinates to recuse themselves from all football investigations and prosecutions following applications by accused persons and the presentation of cast-iron evidence of their involvement with Infantino.
Now, members of the Swiss Parliament will re-look at the Lauber issue, with the possibility of a direct ouster or he can be compelled to resign and if this doesn’t happen (because Lauber is pig-headed and believes that he can PR his way out of this mess) then some members will be seeking to move a motion of no-confidence in Lauber.
Unfortunately, Switzerland is the bastion of white corruption in the world and we would not be holding our breaths that this will happen. In any other civilized European or North American country, Lauber would be out of his job and likely facing criminal indictments.
But why would Gianni Infantino be intervening in cases regarding the large-scale corruption at FIFA especially those from the years before he was anywhere near the organization?
Well for one, our reading of Gianni Infantino is that he has gone out of his way to entrench the belief that football matters are sacrosanct and should NEVER be dealt with by ordinary National legal systems, anywhere in the World.
Infantino would rather that football crimes were handled exclusively by the FIFA Ethics committee.
Sadly, we all got an inkling of how this works in the matter of Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini and the so-called $2 million disloyal payment. In this case, Swiss law had cleared both men of any wrong-doing in the matter yet somehow the FIFA Ethics committee found them guilty, sanctioned them both and in the process paved the way for the ascension of Infantino to the FIFA Presidency.
Blatter & Platini: Set up with a fake enquiry by Infantino.
Let us illustrate, would you believe that a taxpayer-funded investigatory system with limitless resources in terms of manpower and funds would be unable to come up with conclusive and facts-beyond-reproach criminal investigations but that conversely, a loosely cobbled-together investigatory chamber of the FIFA Ethics committee would do a better job of delving into football criminal cases?
This is exactly the balderdash that Infantino would want the World to believe, especially now that he has his grubby fingers deep inside the FIFA Ethics committee.
We have now gotten to the point where people would be sentenced by the sport jurisdictions for the same facts dealt with and cleared by National laws, to imply that sport laws (like the FIFA Code of Conduct) were going to delve deeper and better into criminal behavior, and in so doing, that they would better assess the intentions of any wrongdoer.
It is for this reason that Infantino, in one of the very first acts of his accursed FIFA Presidency, sacked the then heads of both the Investigatory and Adjudicatory Chambers of the FIFA Ethics committee, both with extreme prejudice.
Cornel Borbély and Hans-Joachim Eckert were both sacked while they were airborne on the way to a FIFA Congress in Bahrain and only learnt of this sacking upon landing in the most humiliating way possible.
Apparently no one knows whether FIFA paid for their return air tickets since this was a facility only available to employees, and they have largely kept quiet about what they found out in their various probes at FIFA, due in large part to the confidentiality agreements that they had signed and knowing that they would not want to jeopardize their future professional prospects by divulging such information. They left quietly.
Borbély had been responsible for the investigation of high-level FIFA officials, like Jerome Valcke, Jeffrey Webb, Franz Beckenbauer, Eugenio Figueredo, Nicolás Leoz, Ángel María Villar, Jack Warner, Chung Mong-joon, Wolfgang Niersbach and Theo Zwanziger.
He was not responsible for the investigations against former FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, since Blatter is also Swiss (like him). Borbély was therefore represented in this case by Robert Torres from Guam.
Because the investigations against Blatter also concerned (the then) UEFA President Michel Platini, responsibility for the investigation against Platini was transferred to Vanessa Allard from Trinidad and Tobago… hmmm, Trinidad and Tobago, again?
Allard would be the FIFA Ethics investigator to whom fell the first accusation against Infantino, in which a FIFA employee had contacted the Governance committee with concerns about the unprocedural claims on travel and other expenses by Infantino, and which led to the opening of this file by the investigatory chamber.
Vanessa Allard: Used and then dumped by Infantino for being black.
If you are wondering what happened to this employee, they were the first to be summarily sacked and escorted out of the premises by security, with utmost prejudice and humiliation being the highly juvenile and infantile by-word of the new Infantino dispensation.
Somehow, Infantino was cleared in this investigation and the record sealed thereafter, meaning that no one can really know the exact details of the accusations and evidence presented against him.
Fun fact: Vanessa Allard had initially sought a life ban to be given to Michel Platini, over the $2 million disloyal payment, and was somewhat dismayed by the 8-year ban given by the adjudicatory chamber, yet somehow…somehow was able to find zero fault in the financial indiscretions of Infantino?
With the decision on Infantino coming out in August 2016, Allard probably saw for herself or heard the ruthlessness with which Infantino dealt with those opposed to him, and was coerced into finding a “not culpable” ruling on his various indiscretions.
Eventually the entire Ethics committee (both investigatory and adjudicatory chambers) were disbanded and reconstructed with hand-selected and potentially weak and easily pliable candidates.
The second reason that Infantino would interfere with the football cases in the Swiss judicial system would be to kill off the possibility of legal precedence.
What would happen if the Swiss courts found that FIFA had been a conduit for corruption and even sentenced the perpetrators to jail? Where would this end, especially considering that FIFA is a Swiss-domiciled organization which had for decades been associated with the proliferation of corruption?
Would it open a Pandora ’s Box of similar investigations?
After the 2006 FIFA World Cup bribery scandal was complete, would the Swiss authorities also look into the $10 million dollar bribe paid by South Africa for the hosting rights to the 2010 FIFA World Cup?
What of the 2014 Brazil World Cup or the 2018 Russia World Cup and the 2022 Qatar World Cup, even though the latter two seem to have been covered by the 2015 US DoJ indictments?
Remember, Infantino’s central ethos is the preservation of the corruption status quo at FIFA which would allow him to make money on the side and to keep his hands tightly around the game indefinitely.
Criminologists and sociologists also tell us that impunity is like a drug that increases the feeling of power and invincibility exponentially and leads to a self-perpetuating cycle of this madness until it becomes a new normal.
Gianni Infantino lover Maria Claudia Rojas and Vasillios Skouris: FIFA Ethics Committee heads
Infantino has brought on board the mono-language Colombian Maria Claudia Rojas to head the investigatory chamber of the FIFA Ethics committee. She had in turn been recommended by then Colombian FA boss Luis Bedoya who introduced her as “SUPERAMIGA” to imply that she was worthy of all confidence and would do as instructed, even if it was a bit shady.
Bedoya would later get caught up in the FIFAgate scandal and interestingly, be banned for life by the FIFA Ethics committee…!
When asked later about her relationship with Bedoya and why she hadn’t indicated it in her declaration of conflicts of interest, she denied it weakly, saying instead that Bedoya was just some random guy she bumped into at a few cocktail parties…
By design and without the benefit of a handing over by her predecessor (who had been sacked while airborne), Maria Rojas first statement upon taking office was that there was no on-going investigation or enquiry into Infantino.
And so begun the era of hidden files and ignored FIFA Ethics complaints under Infantino and shepherded by Maria Rojas.
From Africa, there was a complaint that Infantino had interfered with what should have been “free and fair” CAF elections, hosting at least 2 events in the run-up to these elections.
Issa Hayatou: He didn’t know what hit him like a ton of bricks.
One of these was a get-together that included Fatma Samoura to his (Infantino) Coronation ceremony in Nigeria, and where FA Presidents from across the continent were invited.
Then also the so-called birthday party for the Zimbabwean buffoon, Philip Chinyangwa, and which everyone knew was a campaign get-together in a bid to oust then CAF President Issa Hayatou and which was held just a few weeks to the March 2017 elections, bringing together FA Presidents from all over Africa.
The appeals filed at the FIFA Ethics committee by Hayatou never saw the light of day, between Maria Claudia Rojas and Fatma Samoura, they were cleansed and no record of the same appears anywhere, of these complaints.
Infantino with Nigeria FA boss Pinnick (in suit) in Nigeria.
Even worse, both Fatma Samoura and Maria Claudia Rojas have hidden away the massive dossier presented to FIFA by the late CAF SG Amr Fahmy, detailing the massive theft of CAF funds and the sexual harassment of female employees and outside contractors by CAF President Ahmad.
What is now generally accepted is that the Ethics committee is not independent and that Maria Rojas needs the greenlight from Infantino before proceeding with any investigation or opening an enquiry.
Shall we illustrate more contempt by Infantino of FIFA internal bodies? Thomas Vesel, chairman of an independent legal body, the Audit and Compliance Committee, who, upon instructions of Infantino, went to Bruxelles in the company of Fatma Samoura to advise the chairman of another independent body, the Governance Committee, not to disqualify Russian Vitaly Mutko for the FIFA Council seat.
Thomas Vezel and Fatma Samoura: Sent to intervene for Mutko.
When the Governance committee Chairman, Miguel Maduro, would hear none of this, an enraged Infantino started scheming how to get rid of him and to find a way to sneak in Mutko, which thankfully proved useless because of his subsequent fall from grace linked to the Russian WADA doping case.
Neither of the trio of Infantino, Fatma or Vesel has ever been questioned about it by the FIFA Ethics committee.
Even the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) based in Lausanne cannot fully be trusted to be an impartial arbiter where FIFA is concerned, simply for the reason that FIFA to-date remains the biggest funder of this court.
Vitaly Mutko and Miguel Maduro: Maduro told Infantino to go to hell.
Didn’t we all see it in the case of Liberian Musa Hassan Bility and the deadly dance within CAS where his case was delayed unprocedurally until ultimately it was overtaken by real events on the ground, making it moot?
To date, despite incontrovertible evidence (through a FIFA-commissioned audit by PWC) that CAF mandarins have stolen upwards of $24 million in the last 3 years, Infantino continues to play ball with them, in his mind, believing that he now has absolute leverage over them, which he can use to compel them into voting how he wants.
FIFA has now been turned into a 3rd World institution, driven solely by political expediency and no longer by passion and love for the game.
Infantino would not know what real passion for the game is, he probably felt a tinge of envy every time he visited the globe in the company of his former boss Michel Platini, a true master of the game and whom he illegitimately robbed of his Presidency.
Diego Maradona, Captain of the so-called FIFA legends.
It would explain the reason why Infantino likes to surround himself with so-called handpicked “legends”, playing football with them regularly, to try and see if the feelings of wonderment they elicited in all of us can somehow rub off of him.
No man, it doesn’t work that way!
