Fifa president Gianni Infantino dragged into Panama Papers affair

  06 April 2016    Read: 1758
Fifa president Gianni Infantino dragged into Panama Papers affair
New Fifa president Gianni Infantino has been dragged into the Panama Papers affair after documents from the leak revealed details of a deal he signed off on with one of the men at the centre of world football
According to files shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Infantino co-signed a contract with a company owned by Hugo Jinkis – who was indicted in the United States in May as part of an alleged £100 million fraud – while working for Uefa.

European football’s governing body last year declared it had no dealings with those involved in the scandal to have engulfed Fifa, which also previously said the same about Infantino personally.

Although there is no evidence of any wrongdoing in the awarding of the contract signed by the Swiss, Fifa and Uefa’s prior denials make yesterday’s revelation an embarrassment for both him and them.

The Panama Papers show that, a decade ago, when Infantino was director of legal services at Uefa, the organisation sold the rights for broadcasting its club competitions – including the Champions League – in South America to an Argentinian company called Cross Trading.

Cross Trading, which immediately sold the rights on to broadcaster Teleamazonas for about three or four times the amount paid, is a subsidiary of a company called Full Play.

Full Play is owned by Jinkis, who along with his son Mariano, is under house arrest in Argentina.

Having checked through thousands of contracts, Uefa also confirmed that in addition to two it agreed with Cross Trading, it had also signed a European Championship hospitality sales agreement with Traffic Sports Europe, a Brazilian company named extensively in the US indictment.

It denied any wrongdoing by any of its officials and said all its contracts were above board.

Infantino said: "I am dismayed and will not accept that my integrity is being doubted by certain areas of the media, especially given that Uefa has already disclosed in detail all facts regarding these contracts.

"From the moment I was made aware of the latest media enquiries on the matter, I immediately contacted Uefa to seek clarity. I did this because I am no longer with Uefa, and it is they who exclusively possess all contractual information relating to this query. In the meantime, Uefa has announced that it has been conducting a review of its numerous commercial contracts and has answered extensively all media questions related to these specific contracts.

"As I previously stated, I never personally dealt with Cross Trading nor their owners as the tender process was conducted by team marketing on behalf of Uefa.

"I would like to state for the record that neither Uefa nor I have ever been contacted by any authorities in relation to these particular contracts.

"Moreover, as media themselves report, there is no indication whatsoever for any wrongdoings from neither Uefa nor myself in this matter."

Monday`s revelations were the latest from a leak of 11 million documents from the files of the offshore financial law firm Mossack Fonseca.

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