Prince Ali Hits Out at "Interference" in FIFA Report

(ATR) FIFA presidential candidate Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein and UEFA have blasted FIFA over claims made in Der Spiegel that an independent report to reform Sepp Blatter’s organization was censored.

The German newspaper published allegations that last year’s report by former Independent Governance Committee chair Mark Pieth, which made various recommendations for reform, was interfered with by Fifa’s chief lawyer Marco Villiger.

Der Spiegel said Villiger had removed some critical passages before the report was published that would have reflected badly on Blatter. His comments displayed irritation and anger at Pieth’s focus on the ISL scandal surrounding and the seven-figure bribes that had been paid for years by the collapsed rights agency ISL / ISMM to leading FIFA officials, according to the newspaper.

Villiger allegedly crossed out two lengthy passages relating to the impact of the controversial FIFA ExCo decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar.

"There does appear to be evidence of interference in the drafting of the so-called independent Pieth report by FIFA," said FIFA vice president Prince Ali, who is challenging Blatter for the presidency along with former Portugal star Luis Figo and Dutch FA chief Michael Van Praag.

"This is deeply worrying and suggests something is not right at the heart of FIFA governance."

The Jordanian said the allegations by Der Spiegel highlighted "are a reminder of why we need Michael Garcia's report into FIFA's World Cup bidding process to be published in full".

"Without publishing the Garcia report in full, FIFA faces the ongoing public suspicion that interference may also have occurred in that case."

UEFA president Michel Platini declined the opportunity to take on Blatter in the May 29 election, where the Swiss is regarded as favourite to be re-elected for a fifth term.

UEFA hit back at claims in Pieth’s report that European football’s governing body was to blame for some reform plans not being passed, which included the introduction of term limits for the FIFA president and ExCo members. But ExCo members and Blatter were also opposed to the proposal.

At the 2014 FIFA Congress in Sao Paulo, FIFA's 209 member federations overwhelmingly rejected proposals for age limits and term of office limits, despite Pieth’s insistence that both changes were crucial to helping restore the integrity of football's governing body.

Reacting to Der Spiegel's report, a UEFA spokesman said: "The latest revelations regarding the Pieth report show that FIFA’s independent governance committee was anything but independent.

"UEFA has always wondered why it was criticised by Mr Pieth and wrongly accused of blocking Fifa reforms. Now we understand why and where it all came from."

In a statement, FIFA said it was "standard procedure in tasks of this nature for auditors and advisors to first submit their reports for review and comment", a reference to Villiger’s involvement in Pieth’s report.

"It is then up to the respective committee, in this case the IGC [Independent Governance Committee], to either accept or reject these comments as it sees fit," FIFA said.

"That is precisely what happened in this case. Furthermore, the annotations made by FIFA were clearly denoted. FIFA and the IGC have been completely transparent about the comments made and the IGC’s freedom of action is manifest in that of a total 37 annotations made only five were taken up. The final report published was the IGC’s and the IGC’s alone."

Pieth quit his role as head of the IGC disappointed that some of his key recommendations for reform were not approved by FIFA, including term limits, publication of salaries and integrity checks for ExCo members.

Written by Mark Bisson

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