GENEVA (AP) – FIFA President Gianni Infantino has defended his reputation after reports that he signed a Champions League broadcasting contract in 2006 with an offshore registered marketing agency implicated last year in the FIFA bribery scandal.
The contract, which Infantino co-signed as UEFA’s then-legal director, was leaked from the database of a Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, the British daily The Guardian and the BBC reported on Tuesday.
“I am dismayed and will not accept that my integrity is being doubted by certain areas of the media,” Infantino said in a statement published by FIFA, which he was elected to lead six weeks ago.
The UEFA contract reportedly co-signed by Infantino sealed a three-year deal for TV rights in Ecuador for the Champions League to Cross Trading.
That company is a subsidiary of a group owned by Argentine marketing executives Hugo and Mariano Jinkis, who were indicted last year by American federal prosecutors investigating a bribery and money laundering conspiracy in international soccer.