BERN: Switzerland’s supreme court has rejected a plea by Attorney General Michael Lauber to be allowed to involve himself again in all ongoing cases involving world football corruption allegations.

The court upheld an earlier order of a lower court that Lauber should recuse himself from the federal prosecutors’ probe.

Lauber has denied wrongdoing and said “conspiracy theories” over his meetings with FIFA president Gianni Infantino and presumptions of dishonesty were harming prosecutorial integrity.

He had been investigating several cases of suspected corruption involving FIFA since 2014 and the regime of its former president Sepp Blatter.

Lauber had acknowledged two meetings with Infantino in 2016, saying they were intended to help coordinate the investigation. He later acknowledged a third meeting in 2017 after media reports of the encounter emerged.

Lauber had his pay cut for a year after a watchdog found last month he repeatedly told falsehoods and broke a prosecutors’ code of conduct in handling the probe.

A fraud trial of three former senior German officials and one Swiss over a suspect payment linked to the 2006 World Cup hosted by Germany is on the verge of collapse amid a coronavirus-mandated trial halt as a statute of limitation looms.

#############