FIFA audit and compliance chairman Domenico Scala has resigned from his post in protest over President Gianni Infantino’s efforts to control the governing body’s independent panels.
Scala, who ran the independent panel created in 2012 to investigate corruption claims, stepped down Friday at the FIFA Congress, saying Infantino’s involvement, “undermines a central pillar of the good governance of FIFA and it destroys a substantial achievement of the reforms.”
Infantino was elected FIFA chief in February after Sepp Blatter surrendered his presidency under a cloud of controversy stemming from the arrest and extradition of several executives, and Scala’s independent panel acted as a means to curb institutionalised corruption. Infantino’s ruling council was gifted the powers to both sack Scala and oversee the audit and compliance committee, bringing into question the ethics of said amendment.
Scala called his decision to quit a “wake-up call” for those looking to rid FIFA of corruption after Infantino declared the governing body’s period of malfeasance to be over earlier in the meeting held annually since 1998.
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