Daniel Wolfram
A $4 million lease was meant to anchor FIFA operations in New York, but a new investigation alleges that the Trump Tower space has been abandoned.
According to reporting by The New York Times, FIFA president Gianni Infantino quietly agreed to rent a 17th-floor suite inside New York’s Trump Tower.
FIFA signed a lease running over seven years for roughly $4 million.
But instead of running North American operations from Manhattan, FIFA has left the Trump Tower suite as an effective “ghost office” following the World Cup.
Cozying up to the Trump enterprise
Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, publicly celebrated the move, declaring that his family was “honored” to host FIFA at Trump Tower. Even so, insiders told the Times that staff rarely use the office, since the group already runs its main American operations out of two hubs in Miami.
The costly setup sparked immediate internal pushback when the lease was signed. Documents revealed that officials worried about steep local taxes and questioned why the organization even needed to rent a property in Midtown Manhattan.
To dodge state tax bills, FIFA lawyers specifically ensured no commercial business would take place on site.
Political ties to Trump
Still, sources told the outlet that FIFA president Gianni Infantino personally drove the deal.
In the years and months leading up to the World Cup, Infantino openly courted President Trump. He praised him in speeches, invented a special peace prize just for him, and even allowed a red card to be rescinded when American striker Folarin Balogun was sent off in the United States’ win over Bosnia in the knockout stages.
Trump later bragged about making that phone call to Infantino and ultimately getting the red card nullified. “Yes, I asked for a review by FIFA,” Trump said this summer, according to The Independent.
FIFA defends its office
Ethics experts quickly sounded the alarm. Former FIFA governance head Miguel Maduro warned that the deal FIFA made with the Trump Organization “raises a clear conflict of interest in the light of FIFA’s interests in the U.S. World Cup or its partnership with President Trump’s Board of Peace.”
Former soccer official Alex Phillips went even further with the criticism, branding the suite “a completely unnecessary level of pandering.”
FIFA has defended the arrangement with Trump. In an official statement, FIFA wrote that the lease “complies with all local laws” and “was signed in accordance with FIFA’s standard internal processes.”
FIFA also insists that it is important to have a base in New York City, declaring that “New York is a global city, and FIFA is a global organization; it is therefore logical for FIFA to have a presence there.”
