Days after a senior FIFA official said that an in-depth report had failed to find any evidence of corruption with regards to Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid, it appears the investigation is set to reopen.
Last week, chairman of the adjudicatory chamber Hans-Joachim Eckert, the judge tasked with reviewing a 430-page report looking into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids, released a summary of the the investigation.
Eckert said there were some concerns regarding the conduct of individuals during the process, but there was no evidence to find any country guilty of corruption.
However, hours after Eckert released his conclusions, the author of the investigative report, FIFA ethics committee chief Michael Garcia, released a statement lambasting the decision to close the probe.
Garcia at the time said:
“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. I intend to appeal this decision to the FIFA Appeal Committee.”
Now, following a meeting at FIFA headquarters yesterday, Eckert and Garcia have said the world’s governing football body will further review the corruption investigation.
The head of FIFA’s auditing committee will now examine the full report and decide whether to turn any evidence over to FIFA’s executive committee.
Meanwhile, the officials said that the investigatory chamber has already opened a number of formal cases against individuals.
The people were not named, but could include staffers from the nine bid countries who put in for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups – which include the UK, US and Australia, as well as winners Russia and Qatar.
For its part, Qatar’s 2022 Supreme Committee said that it was “pleased with the conclusion of the report” by Eckert. It continued:
“We have always been confident of our position and stand by the integrity and quality of our bid – we have nothing further to comment on this matter and will continue to focus on delivering a historic FIFA World Cup in the Middle East.”
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