Private jets, Putin and the Pope: Infantino’s incredible largesse laid bare

Sam WallaceSun, August 30, 2026 at 7:00 AM UTC

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According to insiders, Gianni Infantino accepted seats on private jets from Vladimir Putin

Gianni Infantino was elected Fifa president on February 26, 2016, but by June that year senior officials at football’s world governing body had made serious complaints about his conduct that, if upheld, could have made the Swiss lawyer’s position untenable.

The details of the 2016 Fifa ethics committee investigation into Infantino have never been revealed in full before. They paint a picture of a man who ignored protocols from the start. Telegraph Sport can reveal how, without hesitation, Infantino accepted seats on private jets from Vladimir Putin’s Russian government and the Emir of Qatar, and how he turned an invite to meet the late Pope Francis into a private trip for his elderly mother.

The report also details how Infantino refused to sign a salary contract worth 2m Swiss francs (£1.5m in 2016) because he considered it too meagre. At the same time he bypassed Fifa’s protocols to appoint his own inner circle of staff, including Mattias Grafstrom, the secretary-general, on salaries that were not aligned with the governing body’s pay structure. This was Fifa’s chance to sanction its president and perhaps force change. But instead its investigators cleared Infantino of all charges.

Mattias Grafstrom (right), the current Fifa secretary-general, is part of Infantino’s inner circle - Manan Vatsyayana/Getty Images

Fifa did not disclose the details of the investigation in 2016, but it did identify Vanessa Allard, the chief investigator, now a magistrate in the Cayman Islands. Fifa said that Allard’s investigations were “carried out diligently over several weeks”. On all seven charges Allard cleared Infantino. “Ms Allard concluded,” Fifa said, “that no ethical breaches had been committed by Mr Infantino.”

Four of the seven counts dealt exclusively with five private jet trips taken by Infantino, two of which were gifts from his former employer, Uefa.

Insiders at Fifa have told Telegraph Sport that less than one year after the suspension of Sepp Blatter, the previous president, the organisation felt it could not endure any more turmoil at the top. There is no suggestion Allard was influenced by third parties in clearing Infantino.

The investigation flowed from official complaints made by leading Fifa officials, which also criticised Infantino’s spending of Fifa funds on items for himself. Not all those complaints made it into the final charge sheet. A senior Fifa official, whom Telegraph Sport has chosen not to name, had laid out in 2016 a detailed set of potential breaches by the new Fifa president.

That memo, which was leaked at the time to the German media, included Infantino’s spending of Fifa funds on personal items. Among them were six pairs of football boots for a Fifa game totalling the equivalent of £942, and a tuxedo for an event for Ifab, the body that controls the laws of the game. That cost 1,415 Swiss francs (then £1,060). These were in addition to the 2,000 Swiss francs (then £1,500) per month senior Fifa officials such as Infantino were paid at the time as a lump sum to cover incidentals.

In the end the charge sheet included seven potential breaches of the Fifa ethics code. Within those breaches were seven private jet flights, with a further two being taken by Infantino and members of his family in that 2016 trip to Rome.

Infantino steps off a Qatar executive jet aircraft upon his arrival at Entebbe International Airport in February 2017

Now under significant pressure following the failure of his plan to privatise 20 per cent of Fifa, Infantino is fighting for his political life. Uefa is determined to remove him before the March elections and has lodged criminal claims against him in US courts.

The Fifa report suggests that from an early stage in 2016 Infantino was at odds with many senior officials who believed Fifa had to be beyond reproach in its dealings.

Infantino described his proposed Fifa annual salary worth an equivalent to £1.5m as “insulting”. Infantino subsequently refused to answer emails on the subject from the official responsible for salaries. Infantino knew from Fifa’s financial reporting that Blatter had earned 3.6m Swiss francs (£2.7m in 2016). When the report was published in August 2016, Allard said Infantino had yet to sign a formal employment contract with Fifa. Now, 10 years on, he is said to earn £4.4m a year.

The flights

As early as April 2016, Infantino’s staff were told to cancel Fifa’s reservations on commercial flights to Moscow to meet Putin. Instead Infantino, as well as Grafstrom and another aide, Zvonimir Boban, the former Croatia international, accepted seats on a private jet on which Vitaly Mutko, the Russian Football Union president, was flying, with associates. Mutko, whose country hosted the World Cup two years later, had arranged a schedule of meetings for Infantino. Infantino had then been due to take a commercial flight from Moscow to Doha two days later, to meet the hosts of the 2022 World Cup, but a delay in his meeting with Putin prevented it.

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The Russians offered a solution: another private jet, this one owned by a subsidiary of the energy giant Gazprom, at the time a Fifa sponsor. Having arrived in Doha courtesy of the Russians, another delay – in meeting the Emir of Qatar – prompted the Qataris also to lay on a private jet to take Infantino back to Geneva in time for another crucial meeting.

Infantino and Vitaly Mutko (right) in Moscow ahead of the 2018 World Cup - Mladen Antonov/Getty Images

Infantino was cleared of wrongdoing on all three flights, as well as a fourth and fifth when he accepted a seat on a Uefa private jet from Geneva to a meeting in Ljubljana and back in May 2016. The code of ethics required the Fifa president not to accept gifts above a “trivial value” and that “if in doubt” to decline. In considering the flight given by the Qataris, Allard noted in 2016 that the Fifa presidency had changed. “Under the new governance regime at Fifa, the Fifa president is, in principle, not involved in any operative decisions (conclusion of commercial agreements, etc) anymore.”

That is certainly not the recognised view of the Infantino presidency as it operates 10 years on.

The papal audience

After attending the 2016 Champions League final in Milan, Infantino took another private flight, this time on a jet owned by Leon Semenenko, a Russian businessman. He had bought it from Irina Viner, the wife of Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek billionaire who had financed Farhad Moshiri, the former Everton owner, and had himself once had a substantial holding in Arsenal. Infantino flew with his wife, Leena Al-Ashqar, and his mother, Maria. He would later say to investigators that the trip was a gift to his mother, an Italian who emigrated to Brig in Switzerland, where she ran a newspaper kiosk for some years.

At the Vatican, Infantino presented Pope Francis with a bespoke Adidas football shirt, and also a Champions League winner’s medal from the final the previous night.

Infantino meets Pope Francis in 2016 - Shutterstock

He had been invited as Fifa president but told Fifa investigators the visit was of a “purely private nature”. Allard considered various potential Fifa ethics code infractions and cleared Infantino of them all. She did note, however, that “the fact he appears to have intermingled certain official and private aspects … and that he apparently attempted to alter the nature of the visit” meant that he “might be considered as not having acted with complete integrity”.

It would be as close as the report came to criticising Infantino’s behaviour. He flew back to Geneva the same day, with his wife and mother on the same private plane.

The Fifa president with wife Leena Al Ashqar in 2023 - Daniele Venturelli/Getty ImagesThe hiring spree

As well as Grafstrom and Boban, Infantino hired Luca Piazza, a friend from Trélex, the Swiss village in which he lived, who had an unspecified role in his office. Infantino had intended to bring in more, Allard said. No job descriptions were provided for the three men to Fifa’s HR department and the same department told Infantino that the salaries proposed for the trio were “higher than what was usually paid”. They were also outside the organisation’s staffing plan at the time. The investigators decided that it was the fault of the HR department for not having briefed Infantino on procedure or policy. It was, the ethics committee said, a “compliance issue rather than an ethics issue”.

Refusal to sign a contract

The private complaints sent to the ethics committee and seen by Telegraph Sport demonstrate the tension in the relationship between Infantino and Domenico Scala, a fellow Swiss-Italian, who was then chairman of the audit and compliance committee. Scala resigned in May 2016, before the report’s publication about the decision to give the power to the Fifa Council – effectively Infantino – to remove and appoint the powerful committee chairmen.

Allard ruled that the Fifa regulations simply did not cover an eventuality where the Fifa president refused to sign a contract. She said Infantino could not be held responsible. Nevertheless, Fifa’s own governance regulations made clear that it was the job of the compensation sub-committee to set the salary of the Fifa president.

Infantino would later say to the Fifa Council in May 2016: “I didn’t sign a contract that was proposed to me by the chairman of the audit and compliance committee. I did not accept this proposal. It was a proposal which I found insulting.”

The fallout

In addition to Scala, those who sent the complaints to the Fifa ethics committee, and many who gave evidence, have long since left Fifa. Telegraph Sport has seen an excoriating memo from a former Fifa official to Scala’s successor, detailing what he saw as Infantino’s breaches of the code. That official left in September 2016, shortly after the report cleared Infantino. The Fifa official who queried the appointments made by Infantino left the following month. A Fifa travel services official also complained formally to the ethics committee investigators. He left in May 2017. Telegraph Sport has chosen not to name these former Fifa officials who are identified in the report.

Infantino’s 10-year reign as Fifa president looks under threat - Andrew Milligan/PA

These were the first witnesses to the nature of a man who would become the most disruptive in world football. Infantino started at Fifa as he meant to go on, and surviving the 2016 investigation, and forcing out Scala, was a major step in consolidating the power that he still asserts. He will need all of it to survive now.

In response, Fifa referred Telegraph Sport to its statement in August 2016 that Infantino was cleared of all seven counts against him. The statement from that time pointed out that Fifa investigators’ decision was reviewed by its fellow adjudicatory chamber and was not challenged by either Hans-Joachim Eckert or Alan Sullivan.

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