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European soccer’s governing body has gone to federal court in Miami seeking evidence for a potential criminal case against FIFA President Gianni Infantino over his failed attempt to sell a multibillion-dollar stake in the commercial business behind the World Cup.
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In an extraordinary escalation of the bitter fight that engulfed world soccer this summer, UEFA says it has retained Swiss counsel who anticipates filing a criminal complaint accusing Infantino and potentially other FIFA officials of criminal mismanagement.
UEFA is asking a federal judge in South Florida to authorize subpoenas for documents and testimony from two FIFA-related corporations based in Coral Gables, seeking records that could help determine whether the aborted transaction was structured for FIFA’s benefit — or to provide improper gains to outside investors and FIFA officials involved in negotiating it.
The application, filed on Aug. 27 under a federal law that allows U.S. courts to assist foreign criminal investigations, seeks records involving Infantino, investor Joshua Kushner, former Liberty Media chief Greg Maffei and others involved in the proposed deal.
Infantino has not been charged with a crime in connection with the transaction, and no Swiss criminal proceeding identified in the filing has yet begun. The allegations contained in UEFA’s application have not been adjudicated. FIFA and others contacted by the Miami Herald about UEFA’s allegations did not respond to requests for comments.
But the filing takes what had been an extraordinary governance crisis inside world soccer into potentially more serious territory.
“On information and belief, Infantino’s actions described herein rise to the level of criminal mismanagement,” UEFA’s lawyers told the court.
Under the Swiss statute identified in the filing, a person who is entrusted with another’s property and breaches their duties and causes financial loss can face up to three years in prison. The maximum can rise to five years if prosecutors establish that the person acted with the intention of obtaining an unlawful gain for themselves or somebody else.
UEFA says Swiss law permits it to report the suspected offense and that its Swiss lawyers consider the prospect of criminal proceedings sufficiently concrete that the organization is seeking evidence before a complaint is filed.
The dispute centers on Infantino’s short-lived proposal to create a new subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE, that would control commercial rights associated with the men’s and women’s World Cups and Club World Cups.
Under the proposal, outside investors were expected to pay roughly $4.2 billion for about 20% of the business, implying a valuation of approximately $20 billion.
The plan collapsed within days amid a revolt by soccer confederations, national federations, players and senior FIFA officials.
Many of the details surrounding the deal have previously been reported. What the new Miami filing reveals is what UEFA now wants to find: the underlying communications, valuation work and internal FIFA records that could become evidence for criminal authorities in Switzerland.
A Miami trail
The trail has now led to Coral Gables.
UEFA filed the case in South Florida because FIFA Americas and FWC2026 US — FIFA’s American operational arm and the company responsible for the 2026 World Cup in the United States — are Florida corporations sharing a principal office at 396 Alhambra Circle.
UEFA argues that the two entities are among those best-positioned to possess records showing how FFE was conceived, structured, valued and approved, along with communications between Infantino and the investors and advisers involved.
The subpoenas that UEFA wants permission to issue are broad.
They seek communications between FIFA and Thrive, the investment firm founded by Kushner, the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; Maffei’s BANN Ventures; other prospective investors and advisers; and records showing when the proposal was created.
UEFA also wants financial models and valuation work, documents provided to investors, internal analyses of FIFA’s approval requirements and records from a July 18 meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan where senior FIFA officials were asked to approve the proposal.
And UEFA is looking for information that could prove particularly important to any criminal inquiry: who stood to benefit financially?
Its application asks for documents concerning “anticipated returns to the investor group,” personal compensation or benefits for FIFA officials and other communications that could show whether the transaction was intended to benefit FIFA’s 211 national associations or instead a smaller collection of investors and officials.
The request does not stop with the abandoned deal. UEFA also wants records concerning “any continued, revived, or renamed version” of FFE following its withdrawal and an Aug. 5 FIFA leadership meeting in Rabat, Morocco.
Kushner on both sides of the deal
The filing relies on earlier reporting to trace the origins of the transaction to discussions between Joshua Kushner and Maffei at a financial conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in July 2025. According to accounts cited by UEFA, Kushner approached Maffei and said, “Look, we’ve been thinking about this with FIFA and we know of your experience with [Formula 1].” Maffei was then chief executive of Liberty Media, which acquired Formula 1 in 2017 and oversaw the racing series during a period of major commercial growth. The relationship would later become central to the FIFA proposal. Kushner became the principal behind Thrive Eternal, the investment vehicle expected to lead the investor group purchasing the FIFA stake, while Maffei became Infantino’s “key commercial adviser.” UEFA argues that this placed Kushner on both sides of FFE’s development: involved in conceiving the proposal and later positioned to lead the investors buying into it. That characterization is UEFA’s. The filing does not establish that Kushner committed wrongdoing. But the relationship helps explain why UEFA is now seeking communications involving him as it prepares for a potential criminal case.
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A disputed $20 billion valuation
At the heart of UEFA’s theory is a straightforward question: What was FIFA’s commercial business actually worth?
The proposed $4.2 billion investment implied a valuation of approximately $20 billion. UEFA says no competitive auction took place and no independent valuation firm was brought in to provide a fairness opinion.
Instead, according to the filing, the placement agent helping market the transaction also performed the valuation after the deal was already in development.
UEFA argues that the proposed valuation badly undervalued FIFA’s commercial assets, pointing to valuations in other sports businesses and FIFA’s history of exceeding its own revenue forecasts. It contends that a value exceeding $30 billion could be supported by market comparisons and FIFA’s financial performance.
That calculation is UEFA’s advocacy, not an independent court finding, and other parties might dispute whether the businesses cited provide appropriate comparisons.
But the valuation question could become pivotal under the Swiss criminal theory outlined by UEFA: To establish criminal mismanagement under the provision it cites, UEFA would need to show that a breach of duty caused financial harm.
$20 million for a yes vote
Then there was the money offered to FIFA’s members.
UEFA emphasizes a controversial provision under which FIFA’s 211 member associations could receive a one-time payment of as much as $20 million if they approved the deal.
That would have totaled roughly the same $4.2 billion that FIFA expected to raise from outside investors.
UEFA characterizes the arrangement as a financial inducement: FIFA would effectively have used money from its existing reserves and future revenues to reward member associations for approving the permanent sale of part of those future revenues.
The proposal also contemplated $20 million in development funding per national association during the 2027-2030 cycle, compared with about $8 million then budgeted. The one-time $20 million payment was conditioned on an association approving FFE by a Sept. 19 deadline.
UEFA publicly called the arrangement “governance by intimidation.”
A possible personal payday
UEFA is also seeking evidence about another potentially explosive question: whether Infantino himself stood to make money from the new venture.
The filing points to reports that Infantino was considering taking a chairman- or commissioner-style position at FFE paying approximately $30 million annually.
That would have been several times the roughly $6 million in total annual compensation that the filing says Infantino received as FIFA president.
UEFA says FIFA did not disclose the prospective arrangement to its members or confederations and alleges that no mechanism was established to insulate the transaction from Infantino’s potential personal financial interest.
The allegation requires an important caveat: The filing relies on previously published reports for the alleged $30 million compensation package, and it does not establish that Infantino ever received or was legally entitled to such payments.
But in the new criminal context, the allegation takes on greater significance.
UEFA specifically tells the Miami court that it wants evidence bearing on whether people acting for FIFA sought “an unlawful gain for themselves or others.”
UEFA says evidence could be at risk
Perhaps the most aggressive part of UEFA’s filing comes near the end.
UEFA wants the federal judge to order FIFA Americas and FWC2026 to preserve their records because, it argues, there is a risk that relevant evidence could otherwise be “lost, altered, or discarded.”
The organization points to the secrecy surrounding the proposal, the exclusion of senior FIFA officials and the departure of former FIFA Chief Operating Officer Kevin Lamour after he publicly criticized the FFE process. Those circumstances, UEFA argues, heighten the risk that evidence could be destroyed or altered.
There is no allegation in the filing that FIFA Americas or FWC2026 has actually destroyed evidence. UEFA is asking the court to impose a preservation requirement before that can happen.
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