FairSquare Delivers 100,000-Signature Ethics Complaint Against FIFA President Gianni Infantino

Since FairSquare first filed its ethics complaint against Gianni Infantino with FIFA's Ethics Committee in December 2025, the campaign has grown from a single NGO filing into a formal submission this week backed by more than 100,000 signatures, according to The Guardian.

The human rights group behind the effort, operating under the banner Reboot FIFA, submitted the complaint to FIFA's Ethics Committee this week and is demanding action, per The Guardian. FairSquare's letter accuses Infantino of, at minimum, abusing his power, violating his duty of political neutrality, and violating his duty of loyalty.

The complaint lists eight specific incidents. Among them: Infantino lobbying for a Trump Nobel Peace Prize in October 2025, FIFA awarding Trump its inaugural FIFA Peace Prize in December 2025, Infantino's role on Trump's Middle East Board of Peace, and his public pledge to work with Trump to "make not only America great again but also the entire world," according to The Guardian. The letter also cites the reversal of a red card issued to U.S. striker Folarin Balogun during the World Cup, after Trump himself admitted he had asked FIFA to review the call, per The Guardian.

The complaint has picked up institutional backing along the way. The Norwegian Football Federation sent a letter supporting it on June 1, 2026. Fifty members of the European Parliament added their names on June 29, 2026, according to Crypto Briefing.

The $4.2 billion deal that blew up

Infantino's bigger problem is the FIFA Forward Enterprise, a proposal announced July 28, 2026, to sell a 20% stake in FIFA's commercial and event operations for $4.2 billion. The buyer would have been Thrive Eternal, a fund run by Joshua Kushner, brother of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to The Athletic's reporting cited by The New York Times.

UEFA, CONCACAF, and the AFC pushed back hard enough that Infantino withdrew the plan entirely. UEFA reportedly threatened a boycott of future FIFA competitions by European national teams if it wasn't scrapped, per The New York Times.

That didn't end it. On August 27, UEFA filed a legal document in the U.S., alleging Infantino was "promoting" a "fraudulently off-market price for his own benefit" and calling the $4.2 billion valuation "absurdly low," not the product of "an open, competitive auction," according to The New York Times. UEFA is seeking documents to support a potential criminal complaint against Infantino in Switzerland.

FIFA fired back. In a filing lodged in New York, FIFA called UEFA's legal maneuvering "little more than press releases in further support of UEFA's smear campaign," and pointed out a real problem with UEFA's ask: it seeks discovery "in aid of a foreign criminal proceeding that does not exist" and that UEFA "admittedly lacks the authority to initiate," per the filing cited by The New York Times.

No Swiss criminal investigation has actually been opened. UEFA is trying to build one. FIFA's own court filing says so directly.

A federal court in the Southern District of Florida granted FIFA's motion to oppose UEFA's request on August 31, giving FIFA until September 28 to file a full opposition. FIFA has filed similar motions in New York and Colorado, according to The New York Times.

The other side of the argument

FIFA's position deserves a fair hearing. The organization argues UEFA has an obvious financial motive to kill any deal that would have diluted its own leverage over World Cup commercial rights, and that European football's governing body is using litigation as a public-relations weapon rather than pursuing an actual prosecutor. FIFA's official statement calls this "a concerted and ongoing effort by some to undermine FIFA and its president," adding that critics "should not seek to achieve through allegation, insinuation or misinformation what they cannot achieve through FIFA's established democratic processes."

UEFA has commercial skin in this game, and no Swiss prosecutor has filed charges against Infantino. The FFE proposal, whatever its flaws, was also a democratic proposal that FIFA's own member associations killed through the process FIFA points to.

But the underlying facts UEFA and FairSquare cite aren't in dispute. The $4.2 billion FFE deal happened. It was withdrawn under confederation pressure. The Trump Peace Prize happened. The Balogun red card reversal happened, and Trump admitted asking for it. FIFA's Ethics Committee never responded to the original December 2025 complaint, according to The Guardian, a silence that's now nine months long.

Separately, a Change.org petition launched August 20 by a coalition of fan groups from Argentina, Croatia, Georgia, Germany, and the U.S. is demanding Infantino's resignation outright, backed by the Football Supporters' Association in the UK. That's a public pressure campaign, not a formal ethics filing, and it carries no institutional enforcement mechanism.

FIFA confirmed this past Sunday, September 6, that Infantino intends to seek re-election for a fourth and final term next year, according to The Guardian, despite the UEFA legal fight and criticism from within the Asian confederation. FairSquare's stated strategy is to keep the pressure building until the Ethics Committee is forced to rule after the World Cup ends. Whether that committee acts at all, and whether it does so before Infantino stands for re-election, remains an open question with no deadline attached.