FairSquare has this week filed a complaint against the FIFA President Gianni Infantino with FIFA’s Ethics Committee. The complaint alleges repeated breaches of the obligation in FIFA’s Code of Ethics (FCE), which requires football officials to remain politically neutral.
The FairSquare complaint, filed with the Investigatory Chamber to the Ethics Committee on 8 December 2025, addresses four instances in which Mr Infantino expressed his public support for the actions and policies of the US President, Donald Trump. It also requests that the Ethics Committee investigate Mr Infantino’s role in the decision to introduce a FIFA Peace Prize, the decision to award it to President Trump on 5 December, and the conformity of these processes with FIFA’s procedural rules.
Nicholas McGeehan, FairSquare’s programme director, said:
“This complaint is about a lot more than Infantino’s support for President Donald Trump’s political agenda. More broadly, this is about how FIFA’s absurd governance structure has allowed Gianni Infantino to openly flout the organisation’s rules and act in ways that are both dangerous and directly contrary to the interests of the world’s most popular sport.”
In view of the fact that the complaint pertains to issues that are squarely in the public interest and is based entirely on information in the public domain, FairSquare has decided to make the complaint public.
A summary of its findings is included below, as well as information on three previous Ethics Committee complaints submitted against Gianni Infantino.
Gianni Infantino and breaches of the duty of neutrality
Article 15 of the FCE requires football officials to “remain politically neutral” in dealing with governments, and provides for a ban on football related activity for up to two years, a penalty that can be increased in cases of repeated breaches. The FairSquare complaint addresses four breaches of this rule.
On 5 December 2025, at the draw for the 2026 men’s World Cup finals in Washington D.C., the FIFA President awarded the FIFA Peace Prize to President Trump. A FIFA video screened at the event highlighted and praised President Trump’s foreign policy efforts in multiple countries around the world. After the screening of the video President Trump appeared on stage with Mr Infantino, who addressed him directly:
“This is what we want from a leader…you definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action for what you have obtained in your way but you obtained it in an incredible way and you can always count Mr President on my support.”
On 5 November 2025, Mr Infantino was interviewed at the American Business Forum in Miami and was asked about his relationship with President Trump. Mr Infantino said:
“In the end he was elected based on the programme, based on what he said. He is just implementing what he said he would do, so I think we should all support what he’s doing because I think it’s looking pretty good.”
On 9 October 2025, Mr Infantino publicly lobbied for President Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025, writing the following on his Instagram account
“President Donald J. Trump definitely deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his decisive actions” relating to the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
On 20 January 2025, Mr Infantino published a video on his Instagram account in which he thanked President Trump for inviting him to the presidential inauguration rally in Washington D.C. the previous day. Mr Infantino concluded the video with a statement that can be interpreted as supportive of President Trump’s MAGA political movement in the United States:
“Together we will make not only America great again but also the entire world.”
The United States’ role as co-host of the men’s World Cup in 2026 requires that FIFA engage with the US President. However, Mr Infantino’s engagement with President Trump must be underpinned by and in conformity with his duty of neutrality. The complaint argues that “in offering clear support for President Trump’s political agenda at home and abroad, Mr Infantino has repeatedly breached his duty to remain politically neutral, and done so in a way that poses a clear threat to the integrity and reputation of football and of FIFA itself.”
Circumvention of the FIFA Council
The FairSquare complaint also requests that the Ethics Committee investigate Mr Infantino’s role in the internal FIFA processes that led to the creation of the FIFA Peace Prize, and the decision to award the prize to President Trump on 5 December 2025.
According to FIFA’s statutes, issues relating to FIFA’s “mission, strategic direction, policies and values” are the preserve of the 37 members of the FIFA Council. In the FIFA statement of 2 October 2025 in which they announced the introduction of the FIFA Peace Prize, there is no mention of the FIFA Council having been involved in the decision to launch a peace prize and there is no mention of the FIFA Peace Prize in the agenda of the FIFA Council meeting held on 2 October 2025.
The Athletic has reported that “Multiple sources familiar with the process, all of whom wished to remain anonymous to protect relationships, said the Council and FIFA’s vice-presidents were not consulted or involved in the creation of a FIFA peace prize and that it was not discussed at the prior FIFA Council.” The New York Times has reported that “the ‘FIFA Peace Prize — Football Unites the World’ was so hastily arranged that it surprised several of the body’s most senior officials, including board members and vice presidents”. The Guardian has reported “the Fifa prize is seen internally as its version of the president’s award at Uefa, the European football body, suggesting Infantino’s say will be decisive.”
FairSquare has requested that investigations examine whether the Bureau of the Council was involved in the decision to introduce a Peace Prize. The Bureau of the Council was introduced to FIFA’s governance structure in 2016 and it consists of the FIFA President, and the presidents of FIFA’s six regional confederations. In response to FairSquare’s concerns about the potentially excessive powers that the Bureau of the Council confers on the FIFA President, FIFA’s Chief Legal and Compliance Officer wrote to FairSquare on 31 October 2024, stating with regard to the Bureau of the Council that:
“The Bureau of the Council is a collegiate body that makes its decisions by majority vote. At no point does the President unilaterally make decisions on behalf of FIFA or override the decision making power of the FIFA Council or the Bureau of the FIFA Council. The Bureau exists in order to assess urgent matters and any decisions of this body must subsequently be ratified by the FIFA Council at its next plenary meeting.“
Gianni Infantino and the FIFA Ethics Committee
FIFA presently has three judicial mechanisms: the Disciplinary Committee, the Appeals Committee and the Ethics Committee. The Ethics Committee is concerned with matters pertaining to internal governance. In 2012, FIFA agreed to strengthen the Ethics Committee in line with the recommendations of an Independent Governance Committee, among other things dividing it into its two chambers. In his study of the Disciplinary and Ethics Reports published by FIFA, Antoine Duval has noted a huge increase in cases received by the investigatory chamber – 174 in 2020/2021, as opposed to 31 in 2011 – and he argues that the Ethics Committee is now “a real player in football governance” but that it “still works like a black box and it is difficult to understand why certain investigations are pursued and others abandoned.”
This is the fourth time it has been known that the Ethics Committee has been asked to investigate Infantino. In 2016 the FIFA Ethics Committee cleared Infantino of any wrongdoing after allegations that, while working at UEFA, he used private jets provided by a World Cup bidding country, filled senior posts without checking candidates’ eligibility, billed FIFA for mattresses, flowers, a tuxedo, an exercise machine and personal laundry, and demanded FIFA hire an external driver to drive his family and advisors around while he was abroad. In 2017, a former member of FIFA’s Governance Committee, Professor Joseph Weiler, filed a complaint with the Ethics Committee against Infantino, alleging that he had improperly intervened in the committee’s work, including their efforts to block Russia’s then deputy prime minister, Vitaly Mutko, from running for a position on the organization’s ruling council. Professor Weiler told FairSquare that there was no follow-up to the complaint. In 2021, the Ethics Committee cleared Infantino of a complaint that was submitted in relation to allegedly improper meetings between the FIFA President and then Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber.
The current chairperson of the investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee is Martin Ngoga from Rwanda, who also serves as Rwanda’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
