FIFA fires Deputy Secretary General Kattner

Kattner originally joined FIFA as director of finance in 2003, before stepping into the interim role Keystone

Football's world-governing body, FIFA, announced on Monday that its Deputy Secretary General, Markus Kattner has been dismissed with immediate effect.

In a statementExternal link published on their website, the Zurich-based football organisation said that an “internal investigation” had revealed “breaches of his fiduciary responsibilities”. FIFA said the alleged wrongdoing was connected to his “employment contract”.

FIFA declined to comment any further on the matter, but said it was continuing to work with ongoing investigations.

Deputy secretary general, Kattner, had temporarily taken on the high-level administrative role after his former boss, Jerome Valcke, was suspended in 2015, and then fired in January this year. FIFA had already made it public before Monday that Fatmou Samoura, an official at the United Nations, would take over the job permanently in June.

Challenging times

The past eight months have been tumultuous at FIFA’s world-governing body. In October 2015, ex-president Sepp Blatter was suspended along with then European football association (UEFA) chief Michel Platini, after Swiss prosecutors launched an investigation in September.

Blatter and Platini were then suspended from all football-related activities by FIFA’s ethics committee in December of last year. Wider criminal investigations by the United States and the Swiss authorities continue.

The eight-year ban from any football-related activity, later reduced to six years for Blatter and four for Platini, had to do with a suspicious payment that Blatter made to Platini in 2011 – nine years after Platini had finished working as an advisor to FIFA, world football’s governing body.

Since then there have been countless revelations and allegations made about how business was conducted at the sports body.

You can follow the ups and downs of FIFA over the course of the years in the timeline below by clicking the arrows to see FIFA’s history.