BERN: Gianni Infantino was far away in the United States, celebrating the opening of a new FIFA office in Trump Tower in New York, as reports emerged back in Switzerland that the world football federation president is to be questioned in a criminal investigation.

Trump Tower, coincidentally, also features residential suites once occupied by two men at the heart of the 2015 FIFAGate scandal – the then CONCACAF general secretary Chuck Blazer and ex-Brazilian CBF president Jose Maria Marin.

As for the latest issue . . . reports in Switzerland and France state that the cantonal court in Fribourg issued a ruling against Infantino on June 16, ordering the local public prosecutor to question him as a defendant, along with two FIFA officials, for “false accusation” against local lawyer Philippe Renz.

The managing partner of management company Sport 7 had criticised Infantino for alleged leniency towards controversial practices taking place in the lucrative transfer business.

In October 2020 Renz requested in vain that the International Olympic Committee, of which Infantino is a member, open an investigation against him for allegedly condoning “the organised crime that is rife in the player transfer world by directly or indirectly muzzling certain FIFA bodies (such as its Ethics Committee) for this purpose.”

Renz, pointing to statistics from the International Center for Sports Studies, estimated that the commissions improperly received by players’ agents in 2018 and 2019 tallied approximately $1bn per year. According to him, these figures had increased further in recent years, and these practices were so pervasive that a company such as Sport 7 would be unable to operate honestly.

A subsequent defamation and slander complaint against Renz from FIFA was dismissed by prosecutor Laurent Moschini in a written assessment. He also refused to pursue complaints for malicious denunciation filed by Renz against Infantino and the two FIFA executives who signed the complaint against the Fribourg lawyer.

Renz successfully challenged these rulings before the Cantonal High Court.

The judges decided, according to a written ruling dated June 16, 2025, that the prosecutor—who had assessed that Renz acted in good faith – could not rely on an exchange of written submissions to determine what Infantino and his two colleagues had in mind when FIFA filed its own complaint.

If the three defendants had reason to believe that Renz’s allegations regarding fraudulent practices by players’ agents and their tolerance by FIFA authorities were well-founded, the complaint filed against the lawyer could amount to malicious denunciation.

The judges decided that only personal hearings could permit the prosecutor to know what each of them “knew, contemplated, wanted, or accepted.”

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