UEFA HAS CONFIRMED that its offices in Nyon were raided by Swiss police this afternoon as Europe’s football governing body finds itself embroiled in the Panama Papers scandal.
Leaked documents have connected Uefa with one of the companies at the epicentre of the dramatic and all-encompassing affair.
In 2006, Uefa’s General Secretary was Gianni Infantino – the recently-elected Fifa president.
Panama Papers show broadcasting contracts, co-signed by Infantino, were agreed between Uefa and a company called Cross Trading to sell TV rights in South America.
Cross Trading then sold the rights to a broadcaster – Telemazonas – for three or four times the original cost.
Cross Trading was registered in the South Pacific island of Niue – a tax haven. But, here’s the bigger problem for Uefa and Fifa now.
The company is a subsidiary of Full Play Group whose CEO and owner is Argentinian Hugo Jinkis.
Last year, as the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich was infamously being raided at dawn by the authorities, Jinkis and his son Mariano (along with a litany of others) were charged with bribery and kickbacks by US investigators.
Jinkis is currently under house arrest in Argentina.
The office of the Swiss Attorney General have confirmed that the search of Uefa’s HQ was motivated by ‘the suspicion of criminal mismanagement’ and that it’s regarding ‘the acquisition of television rights and are, at present, directed against persons unknown’.
Uefa now faces huge questions about the broadcasting deals it rubber-stamped and the individuals it associated with.
Infantino meanwhile, who was elected as president of Fifa to push the disgraced body into a new age of transparency and reform, is already facing into a crisis, just over a month after starting his new role.
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