UEFA is preparing to bring criminal claims against FIFA president Gianni Infantino over his failed proposals to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors.
Infantino’s FIFA Forward Enterprise Plan sparked outrage across the football world, with UEFA threatening to boycott the World Cup in response.
With the plans having since been dropped, that threat has now been withdrawn, but European football’s governing body has made it clear it has no confidence of Infantino’s leadership of FIFA. Infantino is up for re-election next March and is currently due to run unopposed.
And, in the latest development in the fallout from Infantino’s proposals, UEFA has applied for the release of documents related to the their conception as it seeks to take criminal legal action against him in Switzerland.
UEFA has made an application in the United States for information from world football’s governing body and from Thrive Capital, the investment firm founded by Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of US president Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
As part of the plans, Thrive and Kushner were set to serve as anchor investors and pay $4.2billion to FIFA for a 20 per cent share of the FIFA Forward Enterprise subsidiary that would run the World Cup and other major FIFA events.
UEFA’s application states: “On July 28, 2026, without consulting the FIFA Council, UEFA, or any of the other confederations, or any of the 211 FIFA member associations, Infantino, purportedly acting on behalf of FIFA, publicly announced a plan to place the commercial rights to the men’s and women’s World Cups and the Club World Cup into a new subsidiary: FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE).
“That announcement by Infantino was the public unveiling of a plan that he and a small circle of co-conspirators had conceived and reportedly been developing in secret for more than a year.
“UEFA and other interested parties are preparing to bring criminal claims in Switzerland against Infantino and possibly other FIFA officials and advisors for criminal mismanagement.
“The secretive structuring, valuation, financing, and marketing inflicted direct and concrete injury on FIFA’s reputation, governance authority, and commercial relationships to the detriment of FIFA as well as its 211 members, including UEFA’s 55 member associations.”
UEFA alleges that the plan was designed by Infantino to enrich himself and potential investors.
“In truth, it was a vehicle for Infantino and that small circle to acquire a permanent stake in and otherwise profit from FIFA’s most valuable assets to the detriment of FIFA, its members, and other parties within the football family,” the application states.
“Infantino pushed the plan through internal FIFA approval only days earlier at a hastily convened meeting where a limited number of FIFA’s management officials and employees – some of whom had never heard of the plan – were given mere hours to sign off on an unprecedented multi-billion dollar scheme.”
UEFA also took issue with the valuation of the stakes on offer. It claims the valuations were not independently verified and that the stakes would have been available at too cheap of a price.
The application adds: “Under the terms Infantino announced, those investors stood to acquire a permanent financial interest in FIFA’s commercial arm for $4.2bn, implying an absurdly low enterprise value of only approximately $20bn, a figure that was neither the product of an open, competitive auction, nor tested by any independent valuer.
“The valuation work exchanged with Thrive, and any internal Thrive analyses of FIFA’s enterprise value, are directly probative of whether the $4.2bn price reflected an arm’s-length valuation of FIFA’s commercial rights or, as the public record indicates, a fraudulently off-market price promoted by Infantino for his own benefit.”
FIFA and UEFA have been contacted for comment.
