The allegations against Federal Attorney Michael Lauber: The contacts of his authority to Fifa are less harmless than Lauber had shown.
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keystone-sda.ch
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2/5
An email shows that Fifa boss Gianni Infantino wanted to convince the prosecutor of his innocence.
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AFP
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FIFA reacts and describes the allegations in a communiqué as “deliberately misleading and malicious”.
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AFP
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The allegation that Infantino had been prosecuted for a contract for UEFA competitions in Ecuador was “a clear lie”.
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imago / Ulmer
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“Kleptomaniac activities”: Fifa also targets ex-President Blatter.
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New allegations against federal prosecutor Michael Lauber (54) and Fifa boss Gianni Infantino (50) are now coming to the surface. The basic accusation: Too tight ties between the federal prosecutor’s office and the FIFA lawyers. And veiled meetings between the bosses. The “Tages-Anzeiger” quotes on Monday from an email that Infantino wrote to his childhood friend (meanwhile Valais senior prosecutor) Rinaldo Arnold on April 12, 2016: “I will try to explain it to the federal prosecutor, since it is also in My interest is that everything is clarified as soon as possible, that it is clearly stated that I have nothing to do with it. »
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Fifa is now reacting sharply to the allegations that are “deliberately misleading and malicious,” as it wrote in a statement. “FIFA’s position and the true nature of the facts” were “deliberately omitted” in the article.
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Email statements from Infantino “out of context”
And then the world association aims directly at Rui Pinto. It was he who leaked the Football Leaks files to “Spiegel”. He is now under house arrest in Portugal. Fifa writes: «First, the email mentioned in the article was apparently obtained through hacking, which is an illegal and criminal act. Not only are such emails hacked, they can be easily tampered with, and some of the emails you allegedly owned may have been tampered with. »
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And further: «The email mentioned in the article was a private email to a close friend of Mr. Infantino, and the content you quoted is completely out of context, with the sole aim of misleading your readers. In fact, not only did Mr. Infantino have no reason to lie in this email, the email never said that Mr. Infantino wanted to “delete his name”. On the contrary, Mr. Infantino only expressed the wish to explain the situation with “I have nothing to do with it.”
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Infantino’s alleged trial is “total lie”
The allegation that Infantino was being prosecuted for a contract for UEFA competitions in Ecuador was “a clear and complete lie with the sole purpose of damaging Mr. Infantino’s reputation without any evidence. It was therefore perfectly normal for Mr Infantino to feel very upset about the lies being spread about the matter and to speak to several people, including his friends. It must therefore be made very clear that everything that Mr Infantino has done in this regard is neither illegal nor does it violate any rule of an organization. In fact, Mr. Infantino was neither the subject of an investigation nor was there any trial against him at that time or later. »
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The sale of the rights in question to certain UEFA competitions in Ecuador was conducted in accordance with the law, following a fair and open tendering process under the direction of TEAM Marketing AG.
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Meetings with Lauber were also normal for Infantino, Fifa writes, “to demonstrate his and Fifa’s willingness to cooperate in an investigation into what happened to Fifa before he arrived in office. That was the case in 2016 and still is today. Fifa, which has been damaged in the past by criminal acts by several people, meets regularly with prosecutors around the world. Nowhere is this a problem, except apparently in Switzerland. »
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«Kleptomaniac activities of old FIFA»
In many other countries, people would also be sentenced thanks to the cooperation with FIFA. In the USA in particular, the cooperation with Fifa has led to over 40 criminal convictions.
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And then Fifa is still attacking Sepp Blatter and Co.: “As far as Switzerland is concerned, Fifa and Mr. Infantino hope that all studies in connection with the kleptomaniacal activities of old Fifa, which have cost football millions worldwide, to be completed soon and that there will be concrete results in the form of convictions. This will also end the poorly informed and / or ill-intentioned speculation of conspiracy theories aimed at helping the same people who have hurt FIFA and football and who have not been held accountable for such criminal acts to date. Let us focus here on punishing criminals without engaging in local political disputes between some MPs, the media and / or prosecutors. Because if the message is that you can steal tens of millions in Switzerland, as happened in and around old FIFA, and do it with impunity, then it will be very sad. Not for FIFA, for Switzerland. »