UEFA filed an ex parte application Thursday in a federal court in Florida seeking testimony and documents from two FIFA-linked entities to support a planned criminal complaint against FIFA president Gianni Infantino in Switzerland. [1] The filing is the direct next-day answer to the question this paper flagged Wednesday: whether UEFA's provisional boycott suspension was a genuine climb-down or a tactical trade of one form of leverage for another. Thursday's filing shows it was the latter.
The application asks the court to authorize discovery from FIFA (AMERICAS) Inc and FWC2026 US Inc, two Florida-based FIFA entities, on the grounds that they may hold documents and witnesses relevant to how Infantino's abandoned World Cup stake-sale plan — the FIFA Forward Enterprise project, or FFE — was conceived, structured, valued and approved. [1] UEFA's filing alleges Infantino developed the plan in secret with a small group of advisers and investors for more than a year, bypassing FIFA's Council, its regional confederations and its 211 member associations before unveiling it on July 28. UEFA said it is "actively considering" criminal proceedings in Switzerland against Infantino and possibly other FIFA officials and advisers, specifically for criminal mismanagement under Article 158 of the Swiss Criminal Code. [1]
Buried several paragraphs into the coverage of Thursday's filing is the detail this paper's Wednesday story flagged as an open question: who was actually positioned to profit from the plan. According to the filing, Infantino designated Thrive Eternal — an investment vehicle controlled by Joshua Kushner and affiliated with Thrive Capital — to lead the investor group behind the stake sale. [1] Joshua Kushner is the brother of Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law. Former Liberty Media chief executive Greg Maffei was retained as a key commercial adviser on the transaction, UEFA alleged. [1] The filing states investors would have paid $4.2 billion for a stake in FIFA Forward Enterprise, valuing the business at roughly $20 billion — a figure UEFA alleges significantly undervalued FIFA's commercial rights, was never subjected to an open auction, and was never tested by an independent valuer. [1]
That valuation dispute is the substantive core of the criminal complaint UEFA is preparing, and it is precisely the part of Thursday's news that risks getting lost beneath the more immediately newsworthy fact that UEFA also announced, the same day, that it was suspending its boycott threat "on a provisional basis." [1] The suspension clears England's senior women's team to play its World Cup playoff against Greece in October and removes the disruption threatening Poland's upcoming Under-20 Women's World Cup. UEFA's own language makes clear the suspension is not a resolution: "This position will remain under constant review and may be reconsidered immediately if circumstances so require." [1]
Infantino's position was already under separate pressure heading into Thursday. European Leagues president Claudius Schaefer told The Athletic in an interview published Wednesday that Infantino "cannot have a future at FIFA," pointing specifically to Infantino's decision to award the inaugural FIFA peace prize to President Trump in December without consulting the FIFA Council, and to Infantino's intervention overturning a red card for USA forward Folarin Balogun during this year's World Cup following what Schaefer characterized as a call from the president. [2] "It was a real scandal," Schaefer said. "I can't ever recall a political intervention of this kind relating to a sporting matter." [2] Infantino is seeking a fourth term as FIFA president in an election seven months away, and faces pressure from three confederations — UEFA, the AFC and CONCACAF — that have discussed a formal no-confidence vote.
Thursday's court filing does not, on its own, guarantee Infantino faces any consequence. A U.S. federal court granting discovery access is a procedural step toward a Swiss criminal complaint UEFA has not yet formally filed, and Infantino has not publicly responded to either the discovery request or Schaefer's remarks. What the filing does establish is that UEFA's provisional boycott suspension was never the whole story — it was the visible half of a strategy whose other half, the documents UEFA is now trying to pry loose from FIFA's own Florida entities, is aimed squarely at the men UEFA says stood to profit from a deal FIFA's members were never allowed to vote on.
-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos