Less than a hundred days before the start of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar (from November 20 to December 18), the tension is palpable in the entourage of the president of the International Football Federation (FIFA), Gianni Infantino. And for good reason: the criminal proceedings opened in July 2020 in Switzerland against the boss of world football for “incitement to abuse of authority, violation of official secrecy and obstruction of criminal proceedings” are experiencing a sudden acceleration.
According to information from World and the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), the two extraordinary prosecutors in charge of this investigation, Ulrich Weder and Hans Maurer, extended this investigation to a Swiss federal prosecutor. Anti-corruption magistrate at the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Swiss Confederation (MPC), Cédric Remund is heard over one day, Friday August 26, as warned about the three secret meetings (without supporting minutes), in 2016 and 2017, between Mr. Infantino and former Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber.
In charge of several procedures in connection with FIFA since 2015, Mr. Remund is the seventh personality targeted by the investigation of MM. Weder and Maurer, like Mr. Infantino, Mr. Lauber, the former spokesperson for the MPC André Marty, a magistrate friend of Mr. Infantino, Rinaldo Arnold, the former legal director of FIFA, Marco Villiger, and former prosecutor Olivier Thormann. According to court documents seen by The world and the SZMr. Remund’s testimony was eagerly awaited by the extraordinary prosecutors.
In addition to the content of the discussions during the secret meetings, the two magistrates are seeking to verify whether a fifth man attended the last of these informal meetings, on June 16, 2017, in a meeting room on the first floor of the Hotel Schweizerhof. of Bern, in the company of MM. Infantino, Lauber, Marty and Arnold. That day, “five snacks” were ordered, noted, in 2020, the supervisory authority of the Public Ministry of the Confederation (AS-MPC).
Day off to “write a scientific paper”
“No details are known about the content of the meeting, but the number of participants clearly shows that it was FIFA procedures,” supported the AS-MPC.
This meeting of June 2017 remains shrouded in a halo of mystery: MM. Infantino, Marty, Lauber and Arnold took turns “omitted” to inform the authorities of their participation in this third meeting. “Such a case of collective amnesia is an aberration”, had estimated the Federal Administrative Court in 2020.
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