UEFA, the governing body of football in Europe, have confirmed that their offices were raided earlier today by Swiss Federal Police after FIFA President Gianni Infantino was named in the Panama Papers scandal. Infantino had earlier been named in the Panama Papers data leak, with the allegation against him being that he had sold UEFA's broadcast rights to a company in South America, called Cross Trading.
Federal officers visited the UEFA offices in Nyon unannounced and seized details of the contract signed by current FIFA President Infantino, who was the director of Legal Services at UEFA at the time of signing that contract.
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UEFA cooperated completely with the investigation, as per a statement on their website. They said, “Uefa can confirm that today we received a visit from the office of the Swiss Federal Police acting under a warrant and requesting sight of the contracts between Uefa and Cross Trading/Teleamazonas. Naturally, Uefa is providing the Federal Police with all relevant documents in our possession and will cooperate fully.”
The allegations state that Infantino had presided over the deal, co-signing contracts with Hugo Jinkis, who himself has been indicted in the US, over fraud charges of £100 million. Following the sale of rights to Cross Trading, they themselves immediately sold rights to broadcaster Teleamazonas, for an amount said to be three or four times in value. Teleamazonas were the subsidiary of Full Play, owned by Jinkis and his son, Mariano, who is under house arrest in Argentina.
There were also mentions of an organisation called Traffic Sports Europe in the indictment in USA, a Brazilian company that UEFA had signed a European Championship hospitality sales agreement.
UEFA's detailed statement over Gianni Infantino's involvement
UEFA had earlier also issued a statement after the allegations about Infantion had come to light. Here's the statement in detail:
“At the time when this contract was concluded by Uefa, there was absolutely no reason to believe that there was ANYTHING suspicious about it. There was a tender, there were competing offers, there was a recommendation by our agent, Team, and we accepted the best offer made. The contract was then signed by two Uefa directors having capacity to sign contracts, one of which was Gianni Infantino.”
They added, ““There has been coverage in the media about these rights being 'on-sold' by Cross Trading to Teleamazonas for a much higher amount (in the region of $330,000). Uefa wishes to categorically state that it had (and has) NO KNOWLEDGE of any bilateral or private financial arrangements between Cross-Trading and Teleamazonas.”
“Neither Uefa nor Team have ever seen any contract or agreement between Cross Trading and Teleamazonas. If, however, there is anything suspicious about any bilateral or private agreement(s) between these companies then, of course, this is a matter that should be investigated by the appropriate authorities, including the criminal authorities if need be.”
“There has also been some coverage in the media about Uefa previously indicating that it had no commercial dealings with any companies and/or individuals named in the US indictments. At the time when Uefa initially responded to these requests from the media, it had not had the opportunity to review the (thousands) of commercial agreements it has concluded over the years, and so the initial information given was inaccurate and incomplete.”
“And this was also the reason why Gianni Infantino, acting on the basis of the initial information he had been given by Uefa, stated to the media that he had no prior dealings with any of the companies and/or individuals named on the indictment. Uefa apologises for this oversight.”
“We hope and trust that by providing these further details this will serve to clarify matters. There is, we repeat, absolutely NOTHING in this story which could in any possible way serve to undermine the integrity of either Uefa or Gianni Infantino. And we hope this will be fairly reflected in any further news coverage of this particular matter. Of course, if additional information is needed from Uefa on the subject then we are more than happy to provide it.”
