{"id":782278,"date":"2026-07-24T18:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T18:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/782278\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T18:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T18:02:10","slug":"gianni-infantino-ioc-will-not-investigate-fifa-president-as-complaint-outside-its-scope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/782278\/","title":{"rendered":"Gianni Infantino: IOC will not investigate Fifa president as complaint &#8216;outside&#8217; its scope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The International Olympic Committee says it will not investigate Gianni Infantino as a complaint about the Fifa president is outside its scope.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Human rights campaign group FairSquare complained to the IOC that Infantino had breached its charter by failing to adhere to rules on political neutrality &#8220;through statements or other clear expressions of support for the US president&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">US President Donald Trump admitted during the World Cup that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/c1myykx0gmxo\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">he had called Infantino<\/a> to ask him to review a red card given to US striker Folarin Balogun.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The forward was expected to miss his side&#8217;s last-16 tie against Belgium after being sent off during their 2-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But, after the intervention from Trump the one-match ban was suspended for 12 months. No reason was given, beyond citing a rule that allows punishments to be suspended.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Balogun started the match, which Belgium won 4-1.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Infantino has been a member of the IOC since 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Section two of the Olympic charter states: &#8220;Members of the IOC will not accept from governments, organisations, or other parties, any mandate or instructions liable to interfere with the freedom of their action and vote.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The IOC said the complaint against Infantino fell outside the jurisdiction of its ethics commission.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The current complaint, with regard to the Fifa president, refers only to the international federation&#8217;s decisions on its governance and its management, including its relations with government, and to the international federation&#8217;s implementation of the rules of its sport, which are both outside the scope of application of the IOC code of ethics,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The IOC statement came a day after it emerged the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/c1l1vz4n484o\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Norwegian Football Federation was considering filing a formal complaint<\/a> to Fifa&#8217;s ethics committee about the decision to suspend Balogun&#8217;s automatic one-match ban.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a statement provided to the BBC, NFF president Lise Klaveness said the federation had reacted with &#8220;strong concern&#8221; and a decision on whether or not to make a complaint would be made at its next board meeting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The federation has already filed a complaint about Fifa&#8217;s first Peace Prize being awarded to Trump.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fifa has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The International Olympic Committee says it will not investigate Gianni Infantino as a complaint about the Fifa president&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-782278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}