Gianni Infantino has flown more than 600,000 kilometres on a private jet owned by Qatar the past three years. He defied the pandemic and principles of good governance to become an elite polluter, disregarding Fifa’s own commitment to fight climate change.
By Sam Kunti, Steve Menary, Andy Brown, Philippe Auclair and Jack Kerr
Once elected Fifa president in 2016, Gianni Infantino distanced himself from his predecessor Joseph Blatter. He would reform Fifa and end its old ways. A week into office, he even took a budget flight from Geneva to Bristol to attend an International Football Association Board (IFAB) meeting. The PR move prompted some pleasing headlines. Infantino said: “I always use the easiest and best option. We are completely normal people and we must behave like normal people.”
Yet as Bloomberg pondered whether the Fifa era of lavish perks and private planes was finally over, Infantino hinted that he might fly private when needed.
Based on Fifa correspondence, Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet and Idrettspolitikk.no revealed the truth behind the EasyJet stunt: Infantino, Ángel María Villar and Alejandro Domínguez had wanted to fly private but then Fifa general secretary Markus Kattner had balked and invoked a breach of Fifa’s internal rules.
Before long, Kattner was dismissed and Infantino’s private jet jolly took off – but not without some hiccups. In 2017, the Mail on Sunday repo...
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