The Asian Football Confederation has moved to put Jordan Football Association president Prince Ali bin Hussein in front of its own judges, three days after he called the final session of its extraordinary congress in Tokyo “pure politics at the behest of Gianni Infantino.”

Reuters reported on Tuesday that the AFC will send the Jordanian’s statements “to the relevant AFC judicial bodies for their consideration,” framing his claims of coercion, threats and bribery as unsupported and demanding a factual basis.

“The AFC takes seriously the unsupported and entirely unsubstantiated allegations of coercion, threats or bribery,” the confederation said in its statement.

The confederation also rejected the idea that Prince Ali had been silenced on the floor in Tokyo.

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“Neither Prince Ali nor any other member association representative had asked to speak,” the AFC said, according to Yahoo Sports.

What Prince Ali actually said

At the AFC congress, president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa threw Asia’s weight behind Infantino’s bid for a fourth term as FIFA president. Prince Ali, a former FIFA vice-president, was not having it.

“The last day was pure politics at the behest of Gianni Infantino,” he said, according to Al Jazeera.

“Nobody was allowed to speak, question, debate or talk with the media.”

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He went on to warn that a lack of transparency breeds a lack of accountability, and that neither coercion, threats nor bribes had any place in the process.

The August prelude: a $4.2m dispute and a “blackmail” charge

The confrontation did not start in Tokyo. In August, Prince Ali went public with an accusation that Jordan’s prize money for reaching the 2025 FIFA Arab Cup final, a $4.2 million payment pending since the December 2025 defeat to Morocco, had been dangled in exchange for his endorsement of Infantino.

He described what he said he had been told during the summer tournament as help that “would go a long way to helping our FA out,” then rejected the offer outright, posting on social media that “the whole situation amounts to blackmail, and we refuse to give in to that.”

Two days after that post, according to Al Jazeera, Jordan received the outstanding Arab Cup money.

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A confederation that had just changed its mind

The AFC’s defence of Infantino in Tokyo marked a sharp U-turn. Only months earlier, Asia’s governing body had publicly accused him of a serious breach of trust over FIFA’s abandoned Forward Enterprise plan, the $20 billion private equity proposal that would have sold stakes in World Cup profits.

By 24 October it was lining up behind him for a fourth term. Prince Ali’s complaint, in effect, was that the Tokyo session existed to manufacture an Asian consensus on the president’s political future, not to debate the game.

Infantino himself brushed off resignation questions on the same day the congress endorsed him.

The FIFA presidential election is decided by the 211 member associations in the FIFA Congress, each casting its own vote. The AFC’s leadership has now publicly backed Infantino while one of its member federation presidents is heading to its disciplinary machinery for calling that endorsement political theatre.

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Prince Ali has not yet said whether he will cooperate with the AFC proceedings or challenge them. The AFC has not published a timetable for the judicial referral.

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