FIFA head Infantino signs contract for CHF1.5m salary

FIFA President Gianni Infantino will be paid about half as much as his disgraced predecessor Sepp Blatter Keystone

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has agreed an annual salary of CHF1.5 million ($1.53 million) with no bonus in 2016, seeking to end a distracting issue of his first six months in office. This is around half the salary of his disgraced predecessor, Sepp Blatter.

FIFA, world football’s government body, said Infantino would also receive a chauffeured car, his lodgings paid, plus monthly expenses of CHF2,000, in the contract agreed with a three-member compensation panel and signed on Wednesday.

He will be eligible for a bonus in 2017 under a new compensation policy being drafted by FIFA.

“I am pleased that this matter is resolved and that I have a signed, valid employment agreement,” Infantino said in a statement released by FIFA.

The deal backdated to February ends a dispute that saw former FIFA audit panel chairman Domenico Scala resign in protest.

Infantino had described as “insulting” Scala’s offer of around CHF2 million and no bonus.

FIFA’s former president and secretary general, Sepp Blatter and Jérôme Valcke, got bonuses of at least $10 million (CHF9.8 million) for each World Cup.

Blatter and Valcke got basic salaries of around $3 million and $2 million, respectively, before leaving FIFA this year. Both have been banned from football by FIFA’s ethics committee for financial wrongdoing and are under criminal investigation by Swiss federal prosecutors.

FIFA described the compensation system being phased out as “inadequate and open to malfunction and misuse”.

‘Absolutely appropriate’

The new secretary general Fatma Samoura has agreed a contracted salary of CHF1.3 million, FIFA said.

That reverses a Scala recommendation that the CEO-like secretary general should be the highest-paid staffer following reforms which took some executive powers from the presidential office.

The compensation panel met on Wednesday under the leadership of Scala’s replacement, Tomaz Vesel, and included Issa Hayatou, the longtime African football leader who is Infantino’s senior vice president and FIFA finance panel chairman.

“The compensation amounts in our view are absolutely appropriate considering the challenging duties of the president and the secretary general,” said Vesel, a state auditor from Slovenia.