The Independent Ethics Committee recently held a plenary meeting in Paris, which was the first such gathering since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The meeting, chaired by Martin Ngoga (the chairman of the Investigatory Chamber, former Prosecutor General of Rwanda and former Special Representative to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) and Vassilios Skouris (the chairman of the Adjudicatory Chamber and former President of the European Court of Justice), enabled the members of the committee elected at the 71st FIFA Congress on 21 May 2021 to finally meet in person.

In particular, the new members (Stefan Buontempo, Pamela Camus, Gregory Delzin, Michael Goodwin, Parusuraman Subramanian and Alena Lapteva) had the chance to interact with their longer-serving counterparts from the Ethics Committee’s two chambers and hear about their respective experiences and tenures on the committee.

More importantly, the meeting provided an opportunity for the committee and its secretariats to take stock of the achievements with respect to the various ethics-related proceedings conducted in recent years, while looking ahead and assessing the challenges in store in the months and years to come. In addition to various matters involving bribery and corruption, which have constituted the vast majority of the caseload in recent years, the committee addressed the worrying increase in the number of claims relating to sexual and/or psychological harassment.

Lastly, the members discussed key points in relation to potential amendments to the FIFA Code of Ethics.

Besides these fruitful discussions, the members of the committee made the most of the occasion to visit the recently opened FIFA office in Paris.

More information on the Ethics Committee, including its composition and decisions, is available here.