FIFA FD Kattner fired over 'irregular' bonus payments

DISGRACED world football governing body FIFA has axed its finance director and deputy secretary general Markus Kattner after an internal probe found he had received a number of  irregular bonus payments worth millions of pounds.

Kattner’s extra payments were made between 2008 and 2014 and were signed off by then-president Sepp Blatter and the organisation’s then-secretary general Jerome Valcke.

Joining FIFA as director of finance in 2003, Kattner has been temporarily filling the top administrative job of world soccer’s governing body since Valcke was suspended last year before being fired in January.

“Markus Kattner has been dismissed from his position effective immediately,” FIFA said in a statement Monday. “FIFA’s internal investigation uncovered breaches of his fiduciary responsibilities in connection with his employment contract.”

A request for comment from Kattner was not answered.

Kattner’s dismissal comes just over a week after Domenico Scala –  FIFA’s  man tasked with reforming football’s governing body – quit after the organisation passed a resolution which he claimed undermined the independence of its watchdog committees.

The resolution, passed by 186 votes to one by the FIFA Congress, gave the FIFA Council power to appoint or “dismiss any office holders” of its independent bodies such as the ethics committee and the audit and compliance committee. As a result, audit and compliance chief Scala confirmed he would step down.

It effectively gave the council, which has replaced the former executive committee and is headed by the new FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, the right to fire ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, ethics investigator Cornel Borbely and Scala himself.