Fifa to share documents on World Cup sell-off plans with council members

Fifa will grant its council members access to documents regarding the doomed Fifa Forward Enterprise scheme but has not responded directly to more than 50 questions from Uefa about its governance and recent scandals.

In a letter sent to the Fifa Council by Mattias Grafström, the governing body’s secretary general, members were told material relating to FFE will be released for them to view in person at Fifa’s headquarters in Zurich. They will be allowed only to view the documents, of which the exact nature and scope are unclear, under strict confidentiality protocols. A deadline of 16 November has been set to apply for such visits; eyebrows may be raised in some quarters about the fact this is two days before candidates for the Fifa election next year are required to declare their hand.

Uefa had written to Grafström on 19 October giving Fifa a fortnight to answer a series of questions about FFE, the Folarin Balogun affair, the Fifa peace prize, the organisation’s relations with Donald Trump and other major decisions that have caused controversy in the past 12 months. It had asked for all documents regarding FFE to be made accessible, saying refusal to comply with any of its demands should be “justified individually, with a clear explanation of the specific grounds relied upon”.

The deadline imposed by Uefa expired on Monday night, although Fifa Council members are understood to have been told a response is being worked upon and will be shared with them. Fifa’s stance is that Uefa’s questions, posed after Gianni Infantino told delegates at the Fifa Council meeting last month to submit questions in writing before they next convened in December, were too substantial in number for the two-week turnaround.

It remains to be seen whether those Fifa Council members who travel for the document inspection will depart with the answers they require. In August Uefa made an application to four courts in the US for the release of documents pertaining to FFE, with a view to lodging a criminal complaint in Switzerland alleging financial mismanagement. Preliminary rulings are yet to be handed down and the amount of information available to view may be affected. Fifa has accused Uefa of “harassment” and “misinformation” and denied wrongdoing by Infantino.

As reported last week Uefa and its allies are close to identifying a candidate who could stand against Infantino in March, with movement possible early this month.