Ethics complaint against Infantino returns with 100,000 names

Ethics complaint against Infantino returns with 100,000 names

FairSquare has resubmitted its dossier to FIFA’s Ethics Committee accusing Gianni Infantino of abusing his power to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump, now backed by more than 100,000 public signatories…

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The updated complaint was lodged with FIFA’s Ethics Committee investigatory chamber on Tuesday, the human rights group FairSquare said, nine months after it filed the original in December 2025 and heard nothing back.

At its centre is a set of alleged interventions by Trump into FIFA affairs during the 2026 World Cup, and a pattern of public accommodation of the US president by Infantino. The dossier lists eight incidents that, taken together, amount to a case that Infantino has “at a minimum, abused his power, violated his duty of political neutrality, and violated his duty of loyalty in his efforts to ingratiate himself with the US President”.

The most concrete of those incidents is Trump’s personal appeal to Infantino to reverse a red card given to United States striker Folarin Balogun at the World Cup. Balogun’s suspension was subsequently lifted. The complaint also cites the FIFA Peace Prize that Infantino created and awarded to Trump, Infantino’s seat on Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza, and Infantino’s public pledge to work with Trump to “make not only America great again but also the entire world.”

FIFA Forward Enterprise still on the charge sheet

Also in the dossier is the FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) plan, a proposal announced on 28 July 2026 to sell a 20% stake in a FIFA commercial subsidiary to third-party investors for a reported $4.2bn. The scheme was pulled last month after UEFA and other confederations threatened a boycott of FIFA competitions.

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FairSquare argues that the process by which the FFE scheme was developed, in private and with politically connected investors, is itself a breach of Infantino’s duties as president.

McGeehan calls for a two-year ban

FairSquare director Nicholas McGeehan told Reuters the group had returned to the Ethics Committee because the pattern had become impossible to ignore.

“The allegations are a lot more serious. We now have this public and political concern and we felt it was time to again put pressure on the FIFA Ethics Committee and really lay down the gauntlet to them,” he said.

McGeehan is asking the Ethics Committee to impose a two-year ban on Infantino from all football activities.

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The 100,000 public signatories join the Norwegian Football Federation, whose president Lise Klaveness formally wrote to FIFA in June, and 50 members of the European Parliament who backed the complaint on 29 June 2026.

FIFA: use the democratic process

FIFA has publicly dismissed the campaign as an attempt to bypass its own structures.

“Those who do not have the support of FIFA’s member associations should not seek to achieve through allegation, insinuation or misinformation what they cannot achieve through FIFA’s established democratic processes,” the governing body said.

Infantino has not addressed the complaint directly. On 6 September a FIFA spokesperson confirmed his re-election bid, saying he had already made his intentions clear in April and that “nothing has changed.”

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Rabat, 18 March 2027

FIFA’s 211 member associations gather in Rabat on 18 March 2027 for the 77th FIFA Congress, where each casts one vote for the presidency. The deadline for challengers to enter the race is 18 November 2026, four months before the ballot, and Infantino remains the only declared candidate. Confederations including UEFA have publicly criticised him, but each member association votes independently.

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