Court orders Swiss Attorney-General to step back from FIFA investigations
ZURICH: The apparent inability of the Swiss juidiciary to cope with the fall-out from FIFAGate was shown up as a court ordered Attorney General Michael Lauber to remove himself from a federal prosecutors’ investigation into corruption in world football writes KEIR RADNEDGE.
The Federal Criminal Court ruled that Lauber’s confidential meetings with Gianni Infantino, president of the football federation, raised the risk of the appearance of bias.
Lauber, who took a high profile role after the United States Justice Department moved against senior football exectives in 2010, also faces a disciplinary inquiry into his conduct in the high-profile case just as he is seeking re-election by parliament.
Last month Lauber said “conspiracy theories” over his meetings with Infantino were damaging prosecutorial integrity.
He had been leading investigations into several cases of suspected corruption involving FIFA, based in Zurich, dating back to 2014 and the presidency of Sepp Blatter. The criminal probe treats FIFA as a victim rather than as a suspect.
Lauber had acknowledged two meetings with current FIFA president Infantino in 2016, saying they were intended to help coordinate the investigation. He later acknowledged a third meeting in 2017 only after media reports of the encounter emerged.
The agency overseeing the Office of the Attorney General had criticised Lauber for not documenting the meetings with Infantino, exposing him to potential allegations of bias. That was also cited in the court’s ruling released on Tuesday.
The court sad: “The obligation to treat all parties to the proceedings equally and fairly and to grant them the right to be heard … cannot be reconciled with the approach chosen by the Federal Prosecutor in the specific proceedings.
“Furthermore, although it plays only a subordinate role, the location of the meetings (restaurant, hotel) outside the premises of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office chosen for ‘clarification of case-related questions’ is at least unusual.”
The OAG said that it was analysing the court verdict.
Lauber’s office has been involved in a number of sprawling, high-profile money laundering and corruption cases linked to Brazilian state oil firm Petrobras, Malaysian state development fund 1MDB and FIFA, but it has yet to bring charges. (Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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