FairSquare

FairSquare is a London-based human rights research and advocacy organisation founded in 2018, specialising in labour rights and migration. It built its profile through documentation of migrant worker deaths in Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup, producing reports that pressured both FIFA and Gulf governments on kafala reform.

FairSquare filed an ethics complaint against FIFA President Gianni Infantino alleging four breaches of political neutrality rules connected to his public alignment with Donald Trump . The complaint, which invokes provisions carrying potential bans of up to two years, coincided with the EU sports commissioner publicly criticising FIFA over fan safety .

The ethics complaint tests whether FIFA's own rules can be turned against its leadership. FairSquare's shift from documenting worker exploitation to challenging the president directly marks an escalation from advocacy to institutional confrontation, at a moment when FIFA faces simultaneous pressure from the European Union over competition law and fan safety standards.

As of 11 May 2026, FairSquare's Infantino complaint remained unresolved — 43 days after filing. The absence of a FIFA Ethics Committee response, combined with Infantino's continued public prominence at the Vancouver Congress on 6 May, signals the complaint faces procedural delay. FairSquare represents the institutional-challenge strand of civil society engagement with the 2026 tournament, alongside HRW (host cities), FSE/Euroconsumers (EU competition law), and UNITE HERE (US labour rights).

By early June 2026, FairSquare's complaint had gained its first institutional backer: the Norwegian Football Federation formally wrote to FIFA's Ethics Committee on 2 June supporting the Article 15 filing, with NFF president Lise Klaveness noting her federation acted alone as a deliberately unilateral signal. On 8 June — days before the tournament opened — former UEFA president Michel Platini filed a separate criminal complaint in Paris against Infantino and five others, alleging conspiracy and influence-peddling that blocked his 2015 FIFA presidency bid. The two proceedings are legally distinct, but they arrived in the same fortnight, and Infantino now opens the largest World Cup ever staged defending his record on two fronts simultaneously .

On 7 July 2026, FairSquare expanded its Article 15 ethics complaint against Infantino to cite the Balogun case reversal, arguing it fits the same pattern of political interference the complaint originally alleged over the FIFA Peace Prize. The expanded filing gained institutional weight when 50 members of the European Parliament wrote to FIFA's ethics committee backing it, the complaint's largest show of external political support to date. Infantino denied steering the Balogun case; Donald Trump said he had 'asked for a review' of the ruling, a claim FairSquare's filing now treats as corroborating the pattern it first alleged.