BEIRUT (AP) — FIFA President Gianni Infantino received his Lebanese passport at the Interior Ministry in Beirut on Monday, months after he was granted citizenship by Lebanon’s president.
Infantino, whose husband is Lebanese citizen Lena Ashka, thanked President Joseph Aoun for granting him and his family Lebanese citizenship when he received him on Monday.
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The meeting with Aoun took place after Infantino visited the Interior Ministry, where she went through the formal procedures of submitting documents, taking photos and being fingerprinted before he received a copy of his new blue Lebanese passport.
Infantino also holds Italian and Swiss citizenship.
“I am very proud and very happy to have come to the Ministry of Interior in Beirut and finally got a Lebanese passport,” Infantino said in a video broadcast on local television. “I love Lebanon.”
Under Lebanese law, Lebanese women cannot pass on their citizenship to their foreign husbands and children. In Infantino’s case, he received citizenship because Aoun granted it to him.
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In contrast, Lebanese men who marry foreign women automatically pass on their nationality to their children, while their wives pass on their nationality to their children after a certain period of time after marriage.
FIFA is the international governing body of football.