New probe into Swiss prosecutor’s contacts with FIFA boss

BERN, Switzerland: A Swiss oversight body said Thursday that it has opened an preliminary inquiry into a reportedly undisclosed meeting between the country’s top prosecutor and FIFA president Gianni Infantino.

Switzerland’s attorney general Michael Lauber has faced criticism over informal contacts with Infantino while his office was investigating decades of graft within world football.

Two Lauber-Infantino meetings were brought to light last year by “Football Leaks”.

Those 2016 contacts held shortly after Infantino took charge of FIFA from the disgraced Sepp Blatter were “not problematic,” the body that oversees Switzerland’s attorney general, known as the AS-MPC, said Thursday.

In its 2018 annual report, the AS-MPC noted that Infantino had taken charge of FIFA after it had become the target of an investigation.

There was a need for Lauber and Infantino to discuss “procedural issues (and) FIFA’s willingness to cooperate in the delivery of internal documents,” the report said.

But AS-MPC president Hanspeter Uster said that while probing the two 2016 meetings, officials had asked Lauber if he had met with Infatino on other occasions.

Lauber “said ‘no,’” Uster told reporters in Bern.

Last week, Swiss media reported details of a third meeting between the attorney general and Infantino, also a Swiss national.