ZURICH: The Swiss Supreme Court of Zurich has rules that world football federation FIFA had unjustifiably dismissed Markus Kattner, its former finance chief and acting general secretary, in 2016.

The German was one of the high-profile department heads cleared out after the election earlier that year of Gianni Infantino as president in succession to the disgraced, long-serving Sepp Blatter.

Kattner was informed of the Swiss court’s decision last October but it has only now been published while a labour court assesses the terms of compensation.

The 51-year-old had joined FIFA in 2003 from business consultancy corporation McKinsey in a restructuring after the financial crisis promoted by the collapse of commercial agent ISL and broadcast partner Kirch.

He served as FIFA’s chief financial officer then deputy secretary general before being promoted in September 2015 to the post of acting secretary general after the sacking of Frenchman Jérôme Valcke. Kattner was then dismissed himself on May 23, 2016.

Later further light was shone on his work by a report from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the United States law firm commissioned to investigate the mess left by years of scandal.

Sacking protection

Quinn Emanuel discovered that Blatter, Valcke and Kattner had negotiated among themselves ever-more-lucrative contracts and World Cup-related bonuses. In sum, that they ripped off FIFA to the tune of $80m between them over the four years between 2011 and 2015.

Kattner and Valcke, as senior staff members, also secured the protection of long-term severance deals and blanket indemnities against any legal action arising from their FIFA work, whether they were dismissed for ‘just cause’ or not.

The individual figures broke down to approximately $34m for Blatter, $33m for Valcke and $13m for Kattner. This was duly reported to the Swiss Attorney-General Michael Lauber who ordered a raid on FIFA’s Zurich headquarters including, specifically, Kattner’s office.

Kattner’s last public appearance had been in conducting FIFA Congress in Mexico City on May 13, 2016.

Tale of the tape

Days later a storm arose around Infantino’s handling of the FIFA Council meeting on the eve of congress. A recording of the meeting had found its way to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. This revealed how Infantino had forced through the removal of audit and compliance chairman Domenico Scala.

Infantino and FIFA were thus forced on the defensive by media criticism that he had undermined the stuttering reform process by scrapping all the judicial bodies’ independence. Kattner was accused of being the source of the recording and was sacked , among other reasons, for “breaches of his fiduciary responsibilities in connection with his employment contract.”

In June 2020, Kattner was banned by FIFA from football for 10 years and fined 1m Swiss francs after an ethics committee investigation into his bonus payments.

Now the Supreme Court has ruled that obtaining the confidential audio recording was not a valid reason for dismissal without notice.

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