Will the prosecution of the Swiss Confederation (MPC) close, one after the other, the investigations into the corruption scandals linked to the International Football Federation (FIFA)? The question arises after the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) announced, on Saturday, February 29, the closure by the Swiss public prosecutor's office of the criminal proceedings conducted for "unfair management" against the French Jérôme Valcke, ex-secretary general (2007-2015) of FIFA, and the Swiss-German Markus Kattner, former chief financial officer of the proceeding.
In other words, the prosecution of the tandem has been dropped. According to our information, the said invalidated procedure notably targeted a transfer of 10 million dollars made by FIFA in 2008 and at the request of the South African government for " helping the African diaspora in the Caribbean ", On accounts managed by the Trinidadian Jack Warner, indicted by the American justice for corruption. In 2015, the New york times had written that Mr. Valcke was suspected by the FBI of having supervised this payment.
The challenge of Mr. Lauber in June 2019
In this case, the discontinuance of the prosecutions, frozen since April 2019, against Mr. Valcke and his former right-hand man, is the direct consequence of the challenge of Attorney General Michael Lauber, in charge of investigations targeting FIFA since March 2015. This cancellation of procedure is " unprecedented in Swiss criminal history "Writes the NZZ.
In June 2019, the Swiss Federal Criminal Court (TPF) in Bellinzona divested the magistrate of the FIFAgate proceedings against ex-FIFA number 2 and Mr. Kattner. The judges of the TPF considered that Mr. Lauber played a more important role than that of simple director of the institution and that he "Personally involved at operational level in the procedures". His impartiality was questioned by the court of Bellinzona.
Of them requests for recusal had been issued in November 2018 by Mr. Valcke and his ex-lieutenant. Former head of the economic crime division of the Swiss public prosecutor's office, exfiltrated from the MPC in November 2018 due to his supposed proximity to FIFA legal director Marco Villiger, Olivier Thormann was also challenged, as well as the prosecutor Markus Nyffenegger, by prevention.
The recusal requests filed on November 6 and 26, 2018 by Mr. Valcke were motivated by the revelations of the “Football Leaks”. The latter attested to two informal meetings between Mr. Lauber and Gianni Infantino, President of FIFA since 2016. At the request of FIFA, civil party in the ongoing proceedings, the first meeting took place in Bern on March 22, 2016 , five days after the opening of criminal proceedings against Mr. Valcke. On April 22, 2016, a second meeting with MM. Infantino and Lauber took place in Zurich.
Just re-elected in September 2019 for a third four-year term, Mr. Lauber is currently the subject of a disciplinary investigation by the MPC supervisory authority (AS-MPC) for having secretly met in June 2017, M Infantino, and not having mentioned it during his first interrogation. The content of the exchanges, which took place outside of any procedural framework, was never notified.
Swiss newspapers on Saturday Tages-Anzeiger and Tamedia revealed that the AS-MPC accused Mr. Lauber " to have violated his official duties And would cut his salary (300,000 Swiss francs annually) by 8% for a year. The Attorney General intends to file an administrative appeal against this sanction.
Mr. Lauber under disciplinary proceedings
In the context of this disciplinary investigation, Mr. Lauber is defended by Me Lorenz Erni, the Zurich lawyer for… Sepp Blatter, the former FIFA president (1998-2015), himself who has been the subject of MPC criminal proceedings since 2015.
The MPC’s supervisor is expected to release its report next week. For a connoisseur of FIFA, “ the abandonment of the proceedings against Mr. Valcke and Mr. Kattner shows the fragility of the Swiss public prosecutor's office in FIFA proceedings. It’s like everything goes up in smoke. "
As a civil party in this case, FIFA can oppose the abandonment of the proceedings by filing an appeal with the TPF. She is also able to file a new complaint against Mr. Valcke and Mr. Kattner with the MPC.
Contacted, Mr. Kattner did not wish to react. As for Mr. Valcke's lawyer, Me Patrick Hunziker, he could not be reached.
After several criminal proceedings, Mr. Valcke is not done with Swiss justice. He is accused of corruption in the context of the investigation opened in 2017 against him by the Qatari Nasser Al-Khelaifi, boss of BeIN Media and president of Paris Saint-Germain, and a Greek businessman, whose l identity remains unknown.
If he benefited from a partial classification of the procedure after FIFA and Mr. Al-Khelaïfi found, in December 2019, an “amicable agreement” (which stipulated the withdrawal of the complaint from the International Federation and the payment legal costs of FIFA by the Al-Khelaïfi camp), the Frenchman is indicted on several counts and remains under threat of a trial in this case.
