By Andrew Warshaw
July 22 – The eagerly awaited report into possible wrongdoing during the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid process has been delayed for several weeks. FIFA’s chief independent prosecutor Michael Garcia was expected to deliver the findings of his investigation this month but has delayed handing it over to ethics committee adjucatory chamber chief Hans-Joachim Eckert until the first week of September.
Russia and Qatar, respectively, won hosting rights in the December 2010 ballot of FIFA’s executive committee. Only the executive committee has the power to overturn the vote and order a re-run, though the ethics committee can order sanctions against individuals.
A significant number of those who voted have since either resigned or been thrown out and the makeup of the executive committee is vastly different now to what it was then.
Garcia has spent much of the last two years looking into accusations of corruption in the bid process which has become more and more controversial following UK media reports of alleged deals involving senior voters, most notably between Mohamed Bin Hammam and Jack Warner, then the respective presidents of Asia and CONCACAF.
Garcia wound up the investigation just before the World Cup but now, his office says, needs more time to complete the paperwork.
A statement said simply: “In response to inquiries regarding the investigation into the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup, the investigatory chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee has released the following statement: ‘We expect to deliver our report to the adjudicatory chamber by the first week of September 2014.'”
Once the file has been handed over, it is anticipated that that Eckert will need at least another a month to come up with any recommendations. Qatar’s landslide 2022 victory over Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United States has been at the centre of most of the allegations, the Gulf state consistently denying it broke any bidding rules.
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