UEFA has "hit back at suggestions that it and other continental confederations have been responsible for blocking reforms" aimed at cleaning up "scandal-plagued" FIFA, according to Brian Homewood of REUTERS. UEFA General Secretary Gianni Infantino said that there were enough mechanisms in place to "ensure that only officials with a clean past were elected on to FIFA committees." His comments came after FIFA Audit & Compliance Committee Independent Chair Domenico Scala, who is overseeing FIFA reforms, "demanded that an independent committee be created to carry out integrity checks" on exec committee members before they could be allowed to take office. Scala said that confederations had "blocked these reforms and said their 'actions must be consistent with their speech.'" Continental confederations, which elect the FIFA exec committee members, currently "carry out integrity checks, a system which Infantino said should continue." Scala: "UEFA and the European associations have always been in favor of reforms and have always been in favor of integrity checks being made in the confederations. ... I don't think this is a real issue, it's more a communication issue. The real instruments are there, they just have to be applied." FIFA was "embroiled in scandal" when a U.S. probe led to the criminal indictment on May 27 of nine current and former FIFA officials and five execs in sports marketing and broadcasting on bribery, money-laundering and wire fraud charges (REUTERS, 6/30).
