FIFA World Cup Bidding Probe in Tatters; Reaction to Eckert Report

(ATR) FIFA’s World Cup bidding investigation was thrown into turmoil after a row between its investigator and chief judge.

World football's governing body was left reeling on Thursday hours after Hans-Joachim Eckert, head of its ethics adjudicatory chamber, published his summary of US lawyer Michael Garcia’s 430-page report. Eckert's 42-page report was soon discredited.

Eckert, paid by FIFA to provide an independent ruling, said the World Cup bidding probe was closed after he failed to find any ethics violations or breaches of bidding regulations. It cleared Russia and Qatar to host the next two World Cups. FIFA issued a statement of its own saying it "welcomes the fact that a degree of closure has been reached".

Then FIFA's prosecutor issued a 53-word incendiary statement that rendered the whole investigation worthless, completely undermining its credibility and the integrity of Eckert.

"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," Garcia said.

"I intend to appeal this decision to the FIFA Appeal Committee."

Garcia’s explosive reaction blew apart the 18-month World Cup investigation he was commissioned to carry out and left FIFA’s and Sepp Blatter’s reputation in tatters – again.

Eckert cleared Russia and Qatar of corruption and said there was no evidence to support either being stripped of hosting rights or calls for a revote. The report failed to fully explore and trashed corruption claims against the Gulf nation by a whistleblower and did not even question the Russian bid’s claims to have lost emails because its computers were destroyed. One glaring omission was any review of Spain-Portugal’s bid activities, for reasons still unexplained. It was known that Spain had colluded to trade votes with Qatar yet there was no reference to this.

Notably, Eckert focuses on the bidding teams but draws little attention to the allegations of corruption that faced some of the 22 FIFA ExCo members who voted for Russia and Qatar, 11 of them now gone. For example, bribery claims against African football boss Issa Hayatou are not scrutinised at all.

Garcia has already recommended that action should be taken against "some individuals". But there are no details and no sanctions referenced by Eckert. The New York lawyer is also thought to have strongly criticized Blatter’s leadership, but Eckert’s interpretation is very different, indeed he heaps praise on the 78-year-old Swiss.

Garcia had urged Eckert to publish as much as possible of his 430-page report with names redacted to protect witnesses who provided statements and comply with the FIFA Code of Ethics. The former US attorney may now be willing to risk FIFA suspension if his appeal fails and he decides to publish his report in full.

REACTION

Football Federation of Australia said on Friday that Australia conducted a "clean" campaign for the 2022 World Cup and rejected Garcia's claims that the bid offered bribes to FIFA voters with taxpayers' money and broke other ethics rules.

FFA chairman Frank Lowy

"FFA did itsbest to run a competitive and compliant bid and to do it whereverpossible hand-in-hand with the Australian Government, with the customarygovernment oversight," said Lowy. "We also involved, whereverpossible, other bodies such as UNICEF and FIFA itself. In addition, thefinancial management of the bid funds were routinely reported toGovernment and reviewed by independent external auditors. I madeit clear to all involved in our bid that we would run a clean campaignand I stressed this objective at every opportunity."

FIFA on Missing Review of Spain-Portugal 2018 Bid in Report

"FIFA is not in a position to interpret the decisions made by the independent ethics committee. Please note that, as part of its role as administrative support for the ethics committee, FIFA will collate questions from media related to today’s statement."

Hassan Al Thawadi, secretary general of the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery &Legacy

"We say the same as we’ve always said. We’ve always been confident about the integrity of our bid. We have been consistent in our view that any neutral investigation would exonerate us," he tweeted.

"Today’s report was confirmation of that throughout this whole process we’ve been transparent when it comes to the process of bidding for the 2022 World Cup. Our focus has been concentrating on hosting and delivering an amazing World Cup that will leave a great legacy. When we will play is a matter that’s being discussed with FIFA under the guidance of Sheikh Salman, president of the AFC. We bid for a summer World Cup and we’re developing the technology to make that a reality but we will host at any time."

Russia 2018 organising committee CEO Alexei Sorokin

Sorokin explaining destroyed computers to Sky Sports News, which meant Eckert could not fully review the bid: "We rented the equipment, we had to give it back, then it went back – we don’t even know where it went – to some sports schools, so quite naturally other people used it. Whatever we could supply, everything we could supply to the investigation we did. But we have to bear in mind that four years have passed since then, so some of the information we could just forget, naturally."

English FA chairman Greg Dyke

"It [Garcia's reaction] has undermined the whole process," Dyke told BBC Sport. "It's now pretty ugly for Fifa if the person who did the inquiry says the judge hasn't properly reflected his inquiry. That's pretty serious for Fifa. It now seems the interpretation of the Garcia report is not a fair one, according to Garcia himself."

Dyke claimed the England bid and the FA had not broken any bidding rules, despite coming in for heavy criticism in Eckert's summary."Within that report, most of the criticism is of people who co-operated the most fully. If you actually didn't co-operate, you don't get criticised, which seems very weird to me. The FA, I don't think on this, has got anything to hide.

"Everything that was done was cleared with the FIFA executive beforehand and was told to the Garcia report by the English FA."

Reported by Mark Bisson

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