Gianni Infantino to face Fifa council questioning at Zurich meeting on Thursday
Gianni Infantino will be questioned by Fifa council members at the organisation’s headquarters in Zurich on Thursday about his role in the aborted World Cup sell-off plan, the Folarin Balogun affair and the decision to award Donald Trump the inaugural Fifa peace prize.
Infantino previously rejected calls for an extraordinary general meeting over the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposals during the summer, but will meet his critics in Zurich, with one attender predicting the talks could be "explosive". An agenda circulated by Fifa last month lists the FFE proposals, Balogun and the peace prize among the items due to be discussed, and Aleksander Ceferin, Victor Montagliani and Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa — the presidents of Uefa, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation — are expected to press for an independent review of Fifa’s governance.
In response to letters from Ceferin, Montagliani and Salman sent last month, Infantino pledged to commission an external review of Fifa’s future governance, but no details have been forthcoming and there remains scepticism over whether it will be truly independent. The three confederation presidents have publicly called for Infantino to resign and will press their demands at the council meeting.
Separately, a Times report this week alleged Infantino received a "second salary" of about £1.3m in 2024 on top of the £3.9m declared in Fifa’s accounts. US Internal Revenue Service filings cited in the report show a Fifa subsidiary responsible for running last summer’s World Cup paid Infantino $1.76m, an amount not mentioned in Fifa’s annual report, where his salary is recorded as 4.27m Swiss francs (£3.88m).
Fifa statutes state that "the individual compensation of the Fifa president … shall be made public".
Fifa issued a denial of wrongdoing, saying: "Fifa does not pay a second salary to the Fifa president and complies with all reporting requirements in relation to compensation. The Fifa president’s annual compensation, as well as other contractual benefits, are decided by the independent compensation subcommittee. Fifa strongly rejects any claims that it has failed to disclose any financial information and has violated Fifa’s statutes. Fifa accounts are independently audited, and all declarations are in line with tax regulations in Switzerland, the United States and elsewhere."
Despite the controversies and the public opposition of the European, Asian and North and Central American and Caribbean confederations, Infantino is on course to be re-elected unopposed in March’s election. Montagliani has rejected calls to stand against Infantino to focus on being re-elected as Concacaf’s president, and Uefa has yet to find an alternative candidate despite tentatively sounding out figures including Arsène Wenger and Michele Kang.
The deadline for candidates to declare their intention to stand is 18 November, with the election scheduled to take place at the Fifa congress in Rabat on 18 March.