More pressure on Infantino over ‘FIFA culture’ from departing duo
ZURICH: Perhaps encouraged by Miguel Maduro’s attack on FIFA president Ginni Infantino and his reforms reversal, other sacked governance officials from the world football federation have put their critical heads above the confidentiality parapet writes KEIR RADNEDGE.
Maduro, Portuguese former chief advocate of the European Court of Justice, was one of a swath of supposedly independent judicial commission leaders sacked by congress in May for . . . being independent.
Now former governance member Joseph Weiler, an American law professor, has weighed in with comments to the New York Times while South African Navi Pillay, a UN human rights commissioner, has followed his example in quitting the governance committee.
Weiler said: “According to my experience, I have serious doubts about FIFA’s ability to reform under its current leadership.”
Weiler had resigned from the committee in May in protest against the removal of Maduro, largely it appears because of his defence of statutes which are supposed to bar political conflict of interest in the case of Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko.
British parliamentarians also wanted to interview former investigator Cornel Borbély on Wednesday but FIFA refused to lift a confidentiality agrement.
As for Pillay, she issued a damning indictment of FIFA’s culture and reform reversal in her resignation letter, addressed to secretary-general Fatma Samoura.
Pillay said:
All of us, holding office in FIFA . . . required to complete the online course on Ethics. I wish to draw your attention to the prohibition, in the rules, of improper interference, exercise of influence or pressure, and the need to disclose these approaches, if we had been subjected to them, rather than maintaining secrecy.
In compliance with this regulation, the facts of undue influence exerted on the Chair to change a recommendation made by the GC, were made known to me.
As a judge and former UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, I adhere to principled conduct at all times; and cannot countenance serving in an Institution, whose officials violate the norms and standards of good conduct, that they themselves adopted.
I remain concerned that the GC’s independent functioning will not be respected. Kindly accept my resignation from the Governance Committee of FIFA.
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