A top American investigator is crying foul over FIFA’s effort to extinguish global outrage over the organization’s decision to stage the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments in Russia and Qatar.
Michael Garcia, a former federal prosecutor in New York, says the international governing body has mischaracterized the report he delivered to it in September following his year-long probe of the suspicious 2010 vote that determined the host sites.
Garcia’s dispute with FIFA coincides with an ongoing investigation by American law enforcement that appears to be scrutinizing members of the Switzerland-based organization’s decision making executive committee, a rotating group led by FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
On Thursday Garcia disputed a 42-page statement FIFA posted in the morning on its website. The statement purported to summarize Garcia’s report’s findings and recommendations.
“I intend to appeal this decision to the FIFA Appeal Committee,” Garcia said, claiming that the Thursday morning statement “contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions” of his report.
The FIFA appeal committee has members from 14 countries and is led by Larry Mussenden of Bermuda.
Garcia’s protest came just hours after FIFA posted its statement suggesting that Garcia had largely exonerated Russia and Qatar of corruption allegations. (Garcia’s actual report has only been shared with a small number of FIFA bigwigs, though Garcia and others have called for its full publication.)
“FIFA welcomes the fact that a degree of closure has been reached,” FIFA said in its statement Thursday. “As such, FIFA looks forward to continuing the preparations for Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022, which are already well underway.”
The summary, produced by Hans-Joachim Eckert, chairman of the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA’s ethics committee, appeared to clear Russia and Qatar of serious corruption charges while pointing fingers at groups in several other countries that had organized rival bids.
Eckert’s statement said certain unnamed soccer officials may yet face scrutiny and discipline for their conduct surrounding a 2010 vote, a shadowy high-stakes campaign that has been assailed by allegations of bribery and collusion.
As the Daily News reported earlier this month, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York is investigating possible crimes at the highest levels of soccer in conjunction with foreign authorities, including the Swiss government. It is possible, according to sources, that the Swiss legislature will consider taking action regarding FIFA’s tax-exempt status, a threat FIFA has faced before.
The News reported Nov. 1 that an American member of FIFA’s executive committee, Chuck Blazer, had secretly recorded international soccer officials at the behest of the FBI at the London Games in 2012. An FBI spokesperson in New York declined to comment Thursday night.
Eckert, a German judge serving on FIFA’s ethics panel, ruled out any reconsideration of the host venues, and fired shots at committees from several nations that put forth bids for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, including England and Australia. Eckert said the FIFA report found “no major problematic conduct” with regard to the losing bid by the United States to host the 2022 tournament.
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FIFA Statement (PDF)
FIFA Statement (Text)
“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,” Eckert concluded, adding that FIFA “can and must improve the bidding process.”
Eckert’s purported summary of the Garcia report said Russia was found to have destroyed computers used in the course of the bidding process and to have used Gmail accounts for official correspondence that investigators, lacking subpoena power, were unable to retrieve.
Garcia and his team conducted more than 75 interviews with people from 11 countries and reviewed approximately 200,000 pages of relevant material.
Eckert’s statement confirms that the 2022 World Cup, which the United States had hoped to stage in America, will in fact be held in the small and wealthy Arab nation of Qatar, though at what time of year remains unresolved. The desert heat in June and July may force organizers to move the tournament to winter months.
