UEFA have confirmed that their headquarters in Nyon have been searched by Swiss police.
Gianni Infantino, elected FIFA president in February replacing the suspended Sepp Blatter, co-signed a TV rights contract in 2006.
The contract was part of the Mossack Fonseca documents, signed along with Infantino by father-and-son businessmen Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, currently under house arrest in Argentina.
UEFA are said to be ‘dismayed that his (Infantino’s) integrity was being doubted’ and that they were working in co-operation with the Swiss police.
The governing body of European football added: “Neither Team nor Uefa had any reason to believe that there was anything suspicious or untoward about an agency relationship between Cross Trading and Teleamazonas.”
It said any bilateral deals between Teleamazonas and Cross Trading were “their business, not ours”. “We do know that [it was the] best offer for these FTA [free-to-air] rights in Ecuador. And that’s why we took it.”
Cross Trading, the Jinkis’s Argentinian company, which was registered in the South Pacific tax haven of Niue, bought the rights for 111,000 US dollars, then immediately sold them to the Ecuadorian broadcaster Teleamazonas for $311,170.
Following the raid on Wednesday, Uefa released a statement saying: “Uefa can confirm that today we received a visit from the office of the Swiss federal police acting under a warrant and requesting sight of the contracts between Uefa and Cross Trading / Teleamazonas. Naturally, Uefa is providing the federal police with all relevant documents in our possession and will cooperate fully.”
UEFA may well now have to field questions as to exactly what role Infantino played in the deal.
By Steve Osborne @BlizzardSteve75
