World Cup: FIFA embroiled in civil war

On the day FIFA, the sport’s global governing body cleared Qatar and Russia of alleged corruption in bidding for the World Cup, the man who led the investigation has hit back.

Michael Garcia, the man who spent 18 months scrutinizing the bids to host the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, has labeled FIFA’s findings on his report “incomplete and erroneous.”

German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, chairman of the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA’s independent ethics committee published a 42-page summary of Garcia’s findings which had stretched to 350 pages by its conclusion.

Eckert’s summary, published on Thursday, found that both Qatar and Russia were not guilty of any alleged corruption.

But the American lawyer released a statement claiming he will appeal to the FIFA appeal committee.

“Today’s decision by the Chairman of the Adjudicatory Chamber contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions detailed in the Investigatory Chamber’s report,” he said in a statement.

“I intend to appeal this decision to the FIFA Appeal Committee.”

The report, which examined the behavior of nations bidding for the next two editions of the tournament, has cleared 2022 host Qatar and 2018 host Russia of any wrongdoing.

“The various incidents which might have occurred are not suited to compromise the integrity of the FIFA World Cup 2018/2022 bidding process as a whole,” said the report.

The report also confirms that there are no plans to reopen the bidding process for the tournaments.

“In particular, the effects of these occurrences on the bidding process as a whole were far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it,” stated Eckert.

FIFA responded to the report by welcoming the “degree of closure” which has been reached.

“FIFA looks forward to continuing the preparations for Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022, which are already well underway,” read the statement.

“For the sake of further closure, FIFA supports the independent Ethics Committee with respect to their preparedness to potentially open future cases against officials based on the information obtained during this investigation.”

Qatar was criticized in the report for sponsoring the 2010 CAF congress in Angola for approximately $1.8m while it was also noted that there were “certain indications of potentially problematic conduct of specific individuals”.

A statement from the the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar welcomed the verdict.

“We have just received the Statement of the Chairman of the Adjudicatory Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee and intend to consider it thoroughly before commenting,” read the statement.

“As we have noted in the past, we cooperated fully with the Ethics Committee’s investigation and continue to believe that a fair and appropriate review will demonstrate the integrity and quality of our bid. ”

Source: CNN