UEFA’s potential pursuit of a criminal case against FIFA president Gianni Infantino in Switzerland might hinge on whether a U.S. judge allows the European soccer governing body to subpoena Joshua Kushner and compel him to testify about discussions with Infantino. But Kushner is armed with arguments to block UEFA, which he could depict as engaged in a reputation-harming fishing expedition.
Kushner has good reason to challenge UEFA’s demand for evidence, given that the NBA is reviewing him and his pending purchase of the Los Angeles Lakers before granting approval.
As Sportico detailed earlier Thursday, UEFA accuses Infantino and other FIFA officials of potentially violating Article 158 of the Swiss Criminal Code. Article 158 concerns criminal mismanagement, sometimes described as breach of trust or disloyalty. The article makes it a crime in Switzerland for a person entrusted with managing property to breach fiduciary duties and cause financial loss to those who entrusted the property.
Here, the property concerns FIFA’s finances. As UEFA tells it in a petition filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Infantino engaged in the “secretive structuring, valuation, financing and marketing of a transaction that 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.”
