"Are you capable of holding your senior officials to account?" That's the question FairSquare director Nicholas McGeehan is putting directly to FIFA's Ethics Committee — and after months of silence, he's got 100,000 signatures behind him demanding an answer.
The human rights organisation filed an updated complaint on Tuesday, accusing FIFA president Gianni Infantino of multiple breaches of the governing body's code of ethics stemming from his increasingly cosy relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump. The original complaint was submitted in December 2025. The Ethics Committee acknowledged it on December 12th. Then nothing.
What's actually being alleged
The complaint lists eight specific incidents. At the centre of it is Trump personally contacting Infantino during the World Cup to request a review of U.S. striker Folarin Balogun's red card — which was subsequently suspended. That alone raises serious questions about political interference in match officiating at the sport's biggest tournament.
But the allegations don't stop there. Infantino is accused of publicly endorsing Trump's political slogan and agenda, a clear breach of FIFA's political neutrality rules. He's also accused of unilaterally creating a FIFA Peace Prize without Council approval and handing it to Trump. Then there's the abandoned FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal — a plan to sell a stake in FIFA events to private equity investors, allegedly developed in secret with politically connected backers while bypassing internal governance entirely. It collapsed after a global backlash.
FairSquare wants Infantino banned from football activities for two years. Whether or not that outcome is realistic, the pressure campaign is clearly escalating.
The bigger picture heading into March
Infantino is seeking re-election to a fourth term as FIFA president in March, with no credible challenger on the horizon. That context matters. FairSquare argued last month that he shouldn't even be eligible, citing FIFA's own statutes limiting presidents to three terms — a limit Infantino successfully argued away in 2022 by claiming his first partial term didn't count.
The International Olympic Committee already swatted away a related FairSquare complaint in July, saying it fell outside their jurisdiction. FIFA has yet to respond to Reuters' request for comment on the updated filing.
McGeehan is clear that this goes beyond any one official. "This complaint is about a lot more than Infantino," he said. "Really, for us, it's about demonstrating to the policymakers who should be scrutinising FIFA's conduct that the organisation is incapable of regulating itself."
A governing body that can't — or won't — investigate its own president isn't exactly a strong sell for transparency. The Ethics Committee's silence since December 12th has already said quite a lot.
