Inside FIFA’s Battle to Block UEFA’s Evidence Hunt

Happy Saturday. We’re sending the Weekend Edition earlier than usual this week because this is a fast-moving story we didn’t want to sit on.

Today, we break down Fifa’s response to Uefa’s legal offensive. It’s a complicated and extraordinary story, so we’ve done our best to cut through the jargon and focus on what matters.

At the end, we give the perspective of lawyer Jorge Schmidt, of Schmidt PLLC, on whether Uefa can gather the evidence against Fifa that it wants to, and what Fifa can do to realistically stop it. Schmidt specialises in Section 1782 proceedings, the US legal process at the heart of Uefa’s attempt to obtain evidence against Fifa.

Note: The RouteOne team will be off for Labor Day weekend. We will be back in your inbox on Tuesday—have a lovely, long weekend.

A quick dive into the headlines following Friday’s edition.

Uefa wants to know what happened behind the scenes of Fifa’s failed plans to sell the World Cup. Now, new filings show Fifa is fighting across three U.S. courts to make sure it doesn’t find out.

Over the past week, Fifa has begun pushing back against Uefa’s attempt to pry open the files behind Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE), the failed proposal to sell private investors a stake in the commercial business surrounding the World Cup.

In filings made in the United States, seen by RouteOne, Fifa has asked courts to slow down or reject Uefa’s efforts to obtain documents and communications connected to the FFE project. The legal manoeuvring is Fifa’s first substantive response to Uefa’s decision last week to seek evidence in three U.S. jurisdictions — Florida, Colorado and New York — as it prepares possible criminal proceedings in Switzerland against Gianni Infantino and potentially other Fifa officials and advisers.

Importantly, these are not criminal proceedings against Fifa in the U.S. They are closer to legal warning shots. Uefa is using a provision of U.S. law, Section 1782, which allows parties preparing for foreign proceedings to ask American courts for access to evidence located in the country. In other words, European football’s governing body is attempting to assemble the paper trail before taking its case back across the Atlantic.

And there is potentially quite a paper trail to assemble.

Uefa’s requests target different parts of the small circle that worked on the FFE project. In Florida, it is seeking material from Fifa (Americas) and FWC2026 US, entities connected to Fifa’s operations in Miami. In New York, it wants evidence from billionaire investor Josh Kushner and Thrive Capital Management, while a separate New York application also seeks material connected to JPMorgan-related parties. The proposed lead investor in FFE was Thrive Eternal, an investment vehicle affiliated with Kushner’s Thrive Capital. In Colorado, Uefa is pursuing material from former Liberty Media chief Greg Maffei, who had been retained as a key commercial adviser to Infantino on the transaction.

There is a reason Uefa has cast such a wide net. Its contemplated Swiss complaint goes far beyond arguing that FFE was a bad deal. Uefa has said it is examining whether Infantino and potentially others committed criminal mismanagement with the project. Among its central questions is how a proposal valuing Fifa’s commercial rights at roughly $20 billion was arrived at without, Uefa alleges, an open auction or independent valuation.

Fifa is now pushing back against Uefa's request. And its case is not confined to dry procedural arguments.

Fifa moved first in Florida, asking the court on August 28 for permission to oppose Uefa's application. That request was granted on August 31, and Fifa has until September 28 to file its full opposition there. It filed a similar motion in New York on Tuesday, and a motion to intervene in Colorado on Thursday.

In its Florida filing, Fifa’s lawyers say Uefa has no active criminal proceeding underway in Switzerland and that the discovery process would effectively “use the legal process and public US filings to expose information that [Fifa] is obligated to keep confidential under [its] governing rules.”

Fifa has also taken aim at Uefa’s right to bring the fight in the first place. Its lawyers argue that disputes between the two governing bodies are supposed to be dealt with through football’s arbitration structures rather than through the type of criminal process Uefa is contemplating in Switzerland.

But the filings go beyond procedural objections. Fifa is trying to paint a picture that Uefa’s legal offensive is part of a broader political campaign against its leadership. It accused Uefa of taking “yet another step in Uefa’s smear campaign against Fifa and its leadership,” pointing in particular to Uefa’s decision to alert reporters to its legal offensive. In another filing, Fifa went further, describing the U.S. applications as “little more than press releases” supporting that alleged campaign.

Further, Fifa has “made clear,” its lawyers said, that FFE was “only a proposal,” one that could not have gone ahead without support from a majority of Fifa’s 211 member associations and the relevant approvals of the Fifa Council. In Fifa’s words, Uefa is attempting to construct a criminal case around a transaction that was never approved and never implemented.

Fifa then argued that Uefa is commercially motivated. Its filing argues that FFE was intended to inject more cash into smaller football nations and, in doing so, potentially weaken European football's enormous commercial advantage. Strengthening leagues and national teams elsewhere in the world, Fifa argued, would create more competition for Uefa and its own valuable tournaments.

That is, needless to say, not Uefa’s version of events. European officials have portrayed FFE as something quite different: a secretive attempt by Infantino and a small group of advisers and investors to restructure some of Fifa’s most valuable commercial assets without adequate scrutiny from the people who ultimately govern the organisation. Uefa has also questioned why Fifa needed outside capital at all, given the billions of dollars the organisation was expected to have available following the 2026 World Cup.

Fifa, for its part, is now trying to stop that process before those questions are tested through U.S. discovery. Its filings make clear that it intends to contest not only Uefa’s legal basis for seeking the material, but also the premise behind the requests themselves.

Uefa’s position is effectively the opposite. The fact that FFE never went ahead, it argues, does not answer the questions surrounding how it was structured, marketed and valued in the first place.

For now, that dispute is playing out in three U.S. courts. But the real fight is over what those courts may allow Uefa to see.

Ben Gilmour, Staff Writer

I’m no lawyer. So rather than pretend I can predict how three different American judges might rule on a fairly niche bit of cross-border discovery law, I asked Jorge Schmidt, of Schmidt PLLC, who specialises in this area, to boil down whether Uefa can actually get hold of this evidence, and what Fifa can realistically do to stop it.

Fifa's filings argue that there are no criminal proceedings in Switzerland yet, and that FFE was never actually approved anyway; it was just a proposal, one of those fun company brainstorms that happened to involve outside investors, expensive advisers and an initial valuation of around $20 billion.

But Schmidt thinks the fact that there is not yet a criminal case in Switzerland is probably not Uefa’s biggest hurdle. In a 2017 case, Furstenberg Finance v Litai Assets, the appeals court that governs Florida allowed discovery for a criminal complaint that had not yet been filed in Luxembourg. The applicants had, however, promised to file it within 45 days of receiving the discovery.

That is the potential weakness for Uefa. It has identified the alleged offence and the country where it says proceedings are contemplated, but it has not said when it actually intends to file anything.

So Fifa does have an argument that Uefa's proposed Swiss case is still a bit too theoretical. Schmidt's view, though, is that this is probably not Fifa's best argument. The more difficult question is what Uefa can actually do with the evidence if it gets it.

This is where Uefa may have the bigger problem. It is not enough simply to get the evidence and hand it to a Swiss prosecutor. Anyone can report a suspected crime in Switzerland. But that does not automatically give them any role in what happens next. To get broader rights (such as asking for evidence to be considered), UEFA would need to show it was directly harmed and join the proceedings as a private claimant. So far, it does not appear to have said that it can.

That leaves Fifa with a simple question to put to the court: even if Uefa gets the evidence in America, what can it actually do with it in Switzerland? Fifa is likely to argue that the answer is: not much. If anyone was harmed by the alleged mismanagement, Schmidt says, it was Fifa itself, not Uefa.

That could be enough to sink the New York applications, at least for now. Schmidt expects the courts there to want a clearer explanation of what rights Uefa would actually have in any Swiss case.

For Schmidt, Florida is more favourable territory for Uefa. The appeals court there has already allowed Section 1782 discovery for a criminal complaint that had not yet been filed, and Schmidt expects Uefa to get at least some of what it is asking for, albeit with narrower subpoenas.

Fifa is also arguing that this is really a football dispute dressed up as a criminal one, and that it belongs within football’s own dispute-resolution system. Schmidt is less convinced by that. The Fifa statutes do not appear to send every dispute with Uefa to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and in any event there was no final Fifa decision here to appeal.

That argument could still make a judge more wary of giving Uefa everything it wants. But Schmidt thinks it is more likely to limit the discovery than stop it altogether.

And this is where the fact that Uefa has gone to more than one American court gets interesting. Schmidt expects Uefa to get some discovery in Florida, to face a tougher time in New York, and for Colorado to follow Florida’s lead.

Please let us know your thoughts, criticisms, or feedback. We read every email, and we will gladly respond to the most broadly applicable points raised in next week’s edition.

Happy Saturday!