By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year
October 24 – A new corruption scandal erupted today when it was claimed that UEFA officials accepted €11 million (£10 million/$15 million) worth of bribes to help Poland and Ukraine win its controversial bid to host the European Championships in 2012.
Cyprus’ Spyros Marangos has claimed he is going to release information that five members of European football’s governing body’s Executive Board accepted the money to vote for Poland and Ukraine ahead of rivals Italy and another joint bid from Croatia and Hungary.
Poland and Ukraine polled eight votes at the UEFA Congress in Cardiff in April 2007 when they were awarded the tournament while Italy got four and no-one voted for Croatia/Hungary.
There was widespread surprise at the decision at the time and the event has since been overshadowed by problems with the build-up, particularly in Ukraine.
Marangos, a member on the executive committee of the Cyprus Football Association, told the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung that he has tried to give the evidence to UEFA but that they are not interested.
It is unclear how Marangos came to obtain this evidence or how reliable it is.
But his lawyer Neoclis Neocleous has claimed that there are witnesses who can corroborate his version of events and they are willing to testify under oath.
“[There] one or two witnesses were involved in certain transactions,” said Neocleous.
But UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino has dismissed the information.
“If anyone knows things he should raise them,” he told Suddeutsche Zeitung.
“Our doors are always open, we will look at everything.”
But Marangos has several e-mails which he claims are evidence that he has tried to alert UEFA but that they are ignoring him, including cancelling a meeting where he planned to hand over his evidence in August.
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