Fifa president Gianni Infantino pulled into corruption scandal by Panama Papers

Leaked documents raise questions over role played by new Fifa president in TV rights deal while he worked for Uefa

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 FIFA President Gianni Infantino attends a press conference in Bogota. Photograph: Guillermo Muñoz/AFP/Getty Images


Arsenal v Barcelona in the Uefa Champions League final in 2006, one of the games shown as part of the rights deal. Photograph: Alex Morton/Action Images

Owen Gibson-Tuesday 5 April 2016

The new head of world football has been caught up in the sport’s corruption scandal because of documents that have been revealed by the Panama Papers leak.

Files seen by the Guardian will raise questions about the role Fifa’s president,Gianni Infantino, played in deals that were concluded when he was director of legal services at Uefa, European football’s governing body.

According to records, Uefa concluded offshore deals with one of the indicted figures at the heart of an alleged “World Cup of fraud” despite previously insisting it had no dealings with any of them.

The emergence of the contracts from 2003 and 2006, which were co-signed by Infantino, link Uefa for the first time to one of the companies involved in the huge unfolding scandal that has brought down former Fifa president Sepp Blatter.

Uefa has denied any wrongdoing by any of its officials or any other marketing partner.

It said the contracts were all above board. Fifa has previously insisted Infantino had no dealings with any of the officials currently under investigation – or their companies.

The disclosures are based on the leak of 11m documents from the files of the offshore financial law firm Mossack Fonseca, which were obtained bySüddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the Guardian and other news organisations.

Infantino is the Swiss-Italian former Uefa secretary general who won the race to succeed the disgraced Blatter in February. The files show that in 2006, when he worked at Uefa, the organisation sold the rights for broadcasting its club competitions in South America.

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