UEFA is applying through the American courts<\/a> for discovery of evidence and documentation linked to FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), a private company which it was envisaged would run the World Cup and other FIFA competitions.<\/p>\nFIFA confirmed last month the plan had been to sell a 20% stake in that company to private investors. The plan was withdrawn by FIFA president Gianni Infantino on 1 August amid opposition from UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and CONCACAF, the confederation for countries in North and Central America plus the Caribbean.<\/p>\n
That withdrawal has not stopped UEFA pursuing Infantino and other FIFA officials, with UEFA saying documents obtained were intended for use in preparing potential criminal proceedings in Switzerland, in filings seen by the Press Association on 27 August.<\/p>\n
The following day, FIFA sought approval to oppose UEFA\u2019s request in the Southern District of Florida, a motion which was granted by the court on the next business day, 31 August. FIFA has until 28 September to submit a full opposition to that court.<\/p>\n
A similar motion to oppose was also filed in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday. Documents from FIFA\u2019s legal team seen by the Press Association describe UEFA\u2019s applications as being “little more than press releases in further support of UEFA\u2019s smear campaign against FIFA and its leadership”.<\/p>\n
FIFA\u2019s filing asks the New York court to defer consideration on UEFA\u2019s discovery application until the Florida court has ruled on it, or requests that the court permit FIFA permission to oppose UEFA\u2019s application no later than 30 September.<\/p>\n
The filing said UEFA\u2019s motivation in its opposition to FFE and Infantino was “to prevent smaller countries from having the financial strength to compete with the European elite”.<\/p>\n
It added: “If soccer is strengthened in the developing world, global competition increases, which ultimately reduces UEFA\u2019s market power and provides more competition for its flagship tournaments.<\/p>\n
“By raising funds to allow some of FIFA\u2019s smaller member associations to better develop soccer, FFE would lead to more players from those nations<\/p>\n
choosing to represent their countries of origin and playing in their home leagues rather than playing abroad.<\/p>\n
“All of this would erode UEFA\u2019s dominance over other regions of the world.”<\/p>\n
UEFA\u2019s filing accused Infantino of “criminal mismanagement” in relation to FFE, and said the proposed sale of a stake for 4.2 billion US dollars in the company was “a fraudulently off-market price promoted by Infantino for his own benefit”.<\/p>\n
In a separate statement published last week, UEFA called for an independent external review of the origins of the FFE and said that if Infantino chose to stand for re-election at next year\u2019s FIFA Congress, UEFA would “join forces with its partner confederations to ensure that member associations are offered a credible alternative \u2013 one committed to integrity, accountability, development and genuine institutional change”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FIFA says legal applications made by UEFA to access documents related to FIFA’s controversial private investor plan are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-613926","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\/613926","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=613926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}