An inquiry into FIFA President Gianni Infantino has produced a set of findings tied to the period leading up to the World Cup. Payments routed to the president by FIFA — extending beyond his contracted salary and bonus entitlements and absent from any public record — form the core of a Martyn Ziegler investigation that raises questions about whether those transactions fall within the boundaries of the organisation's own statutes.

According to unnamed sources, a portion of the undisclosed payments directed to Infantino went toward personal living expenses in Miami ahead of the World Cup, among them the monthly rental of a waterfront property reported to cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Two income streams flowed to Infantino: a salary drawn from FIFA's Swiss operations and recorded in its annual report, alongside a second payment channelled through the World Cup organising body in the United States that went undisclosed. According to FIFA's annual report, Infantino received total compensation of 4.274m CHF (£3.88m) during 2024.

A tax filing submitted to the Internal Revenue Service by FWC2026 US Inc — the corporate entity established to administer the World Cup — reveals that Infantino received an additional $1.76m (£1.3m) during that period, a payment absent from the organisation's publicly available annual report. Figures from those with knowledge of the matter placed Infantino's compensation for 2025 and 2026 at comparable levels, and possibly higher.

Neither Grafstrom, in his role as FIFA's secretary general, nor Montagliani, who held the chairmanship of the FWC2026 board while serving as CONCACAF president, collected supplementary compensation from the FWC2026 organisation. Of the $1.76m in FWC2026 compensation recorded against 2024, a $626,229 line item categorised as "other reportable compensation" sat alongside the base salary and bonus components.

Questions have been raised within international football circles about whether those funds covered his access to the waterfront property in a sought-after part of Miami Beach, though FIFA has yet to address the matter. Located within Sunset Islands — a quartet of artificially constructed landmasses enclosed by a staffed security entrance — the property sits inside one of four such islands making up the development.

According to reports, Infantino had access to a waterfront property — complete with a swimming pool and a private dock — that Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive turned billionaire, purchased for $27m (£20.41m) in 2023, with accounts suggesting he vacated the residence towards the end of 2025.

Maduro, who once led FIFA's governance committee, characterised the undisclosed bonus arrangements as a breach of the organisation's own statutes and called for the matter to be examined by an independent body. FIFA's statutes, under Article 43, paragraph 13, require that compensation paid to the president, council members, and secretary general be disclosed publicly; Maduro, speaking to a broadcaster, argued that payments made by FIFA-affiliated companies to any of those officials — if left undisclosed — would amount to a breach of those rules.

Under its own governing statutes, FIFA carries a binding duty to operate with full transparency. One position advanced in the debate held that the sub-committee responsible for compensation lacked authority to approve those additional forms of payment, while another position put forward was that the head of FIFA warranted strong remuneration provided it was disclosed openly to the public. When the newspaper put questions to FIFA about the extra payments to Infantino that had not appeared in the annual report, no explanation for their absence from that document was offered in return.