UEFA has confirmed a “departure payment” was made to a female employee who is alleged to have been in a relationship with Gianni Infantino while he was the organisation’s general secretary.<\/p>\n
The Daily Telegraph reported on Friday night that the woman received a six-figure sum following the alleged relationship with current FIFA president Infantino.<\/p>\n
In a statement, UEFA confirmed a payment was made along with covering the fees for an MBA course, which it said was “in line” with regulations at the time.<\/p>\n
Infantino worked at UEFA for 16 years and was its general secretary from 2009 before being elected as FIFA president in February 2016.<\/p>\n
A UEFA spokesperson said: “We are aware of the allegations and can confirm a departure payment was made to the individual in question, coupled with the payment of fees for a MBA course at a local business school.<\/p>\n
“The payment was in line with the regulations that existed for departing staff at the time.<\/p>\n
“Such regulations have been tightened since 2016 and the current staff regulations \u2013 which apply to all UEFA employees at whatever level \u2013 reflect those found in a modern, high-profile organisation.”<\/p>\n
It has been reported that a spokesman for the FIFA President had told the Daily Telegraph that Infantino “strongly denies these categorically untrue allegations”.<\/p>\n
Infantino has found himself under pressure for over a week following a controversial plan to sell stakes to private investors in a company to run the World Cup.<\/p>\n
The plan was rejected by UEFA and two other continental confederations. On Wednesday, Infantino was backed by FIFA\u2019s management board following a meeting in Morocco and issued an apology over the process.<\/p>\n
UEFA\u2019s threat for its 55 member countries to boycott FIFA competitions until the plan was scrapped remains, with the European confederation saying on Thursday that Wednesday\u2019s announcement “changes nothing”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UEFA has confirmed a “departure payment” was made to a female employee who is alleged to have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-586926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}