GENEVA (AP) – FIFA has fired finance director and deputy secretary general Markus Kattner after an internal investigation revealed he got irregular bonus payments worth millions of dollars.
Kattner was due the payments over a six-year period from 2008-14 from additions to his employment contract, a person familiar with the FIFA investigation said Monday.
The extra payments were signed off by then-President Sepp Blatter and then-secretary general Jerome Valcke, Kattner’s immediate boss in that period.
“We don’t yet understand why these payments were made,” the person said on condition of anonymity as details of the investigation are confidential. “These contract provisions were not known widely and not to the appropriate officers at FIFA.”
Kattner, who joined FIFA as director of finance in 2003, has been temporarily filling the top administrative job of world soccer’s governing body since Valcke was suspended last year before being fired in January.