Federal attorney Michael Lauber has received a damning judgment from the Swiss Federal Administrative Court on his administration and has offered to resign. With that, the noose also draws around FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
Because the president of the world football association FIFA was Lauber's interlocutor at least three secret meetings, which the chief prosecutor had not recorded, and the last one, in June 2017, even all four participants wanted to have forgotten collectively.
The court now ruled that Lauber had seriously violated his official and fiduciary duty by "deliberately telling the falsehood" and even "deliberately concealing" one of the meetings with Infantino. Lauber rejected “the subjection of the lie” when he retired, but admitted that it would hurt the criminal authority if he no longer believed him as a federal prosecutor.
It will be precarious for Infantino
The clear lie judgment of the Federal Supreme Court is also a dangerous development for FIFA boss Infantino, because this fact alone would justify an investigation by the FIFA Ethics Committee against him according to the statutes.
But Infantino's situation is even more precarious: a special prosecutor has just been set up in Switzerland to decide whether to open a criminal investigation against him and Lauber for violating official secrets and instigating them.
The FIFA president could be suspended
This special investigator, Stefan Frei from Obwalden, can use e-mails in which Infantino expresses that he wants to represent his very personal interests at one of the meetings with Lauber - at that time the federal prosecutor had determined Infantino's closest professional environment.
In addition to the incriminating emails, the procedural examiner now has a Supreme Court judgment on Lauber, which in the context of Infantino also accuses the deliberate falsehood and the agreement. Should Frei open a procedure, this should lead to a suspension of Infantinos by the Fifa ethicists. Then the world association would need a new president.
