Exclusive | FIFA boss Gianni Infantino accused of abuse of power over VIP Miami airport perks for wife, kids: experts
FIFA boss Gianni Infantino has been accused of “abuse of power” after the group booked VIP airport escorts in Miami for the soccer fat cat’s wife and daughters, including one trip with their dogs, according to sources and official records.His wife and daughters show up 125 times in Miami International Airport’s protocol logs since January 2024, records released to The Post show.The logs hold 95 records, many listing more than one family member.On 63 of them, Gianni has no entry for those dates.
His wife, Leena Infantino, shows up 46 times — nearly twice as often as her globe-trotting husband, who appears 24 times.The Post has seen internal airport correspondence that shows FIFA demanding the red-carpet treatment for his daughters Alessia, Sabrina and Dahlia for a trip to Doha “with their dogs.”Airport spokesman Greg Chin confirmed FIFA made the requests.Infantino heads a nongovernmental organization, and staffers were free, so “the service was granted,” Chin said.That could spell an ethics headache for FIFA, two of Europe’s top sports governance experts told The Post.
Its code bars officials from using their jobs “for private aims or gains.”Antoine Duval of the T.M.C.Asser Institute in The Hague said it “could constitute an abuse of position” under that code — if Infantino asked FIFA to arrange his family’s private travel.That would be “a misuse of FIFA’s resources for his own private purpose,” said Duval, a senior researcher in sports law.By the basic rules of good governance, “this is an abuse of position, an abuse of power,” said Arnout Geeraert of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who once chaired Belgian soccer’s integrity panel.
The Post has approached FIFA, the State Department, US Customs and Border Protection and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, for comment.The Swiss-Italian sports boss has spent more time in Miami ahead of the World Cup, where FIFA has an office.The Infantino famil...