By Andrew Warshaw
September 24 – On the eve of its latest executive committee meeting, further pressure is growing on FIFA to authorise publication of the comprehensive report into possible World Cup bid corruption in order to maintain credibility and transparency.
The 430-page summation of the 2018 and 2022 bid campaigns is currently being scrutinised by German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert who heads the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA’s ethics committee and has insisted he will not divulge the report’s full contents.
Eckert says he won’t be able to reveal his verdicts until next spring but even when that happens, FIFA’s ethics code, under a section entitled “confidentiality”, states that “only the final decisions already notified to the addressees may be made public.”
That means the bulk of the report can theoretically be kept under lock and key but several senior FIFA administrators believe the matter is so serious that secrecy rules should be lifted.
Asia’s FIFA vice-president Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein of Jordan, whose bullish approach to the need for transparency does not always find favour among some of his more restrained colleagues, is one of them.
“In the interest of full transparency, I believe it is important that the much anticipated report on the ethics investigation that is crucial to ensuring good governance at FIFA is fully disclosed and open to the public,” Prince Ali re-iterated in a statement.
He is not alone. Michael Garcia, the American independent prosecutor appointed by FIFA to carry out the probe, wants to ease the confidentiality rules which prohibit publishing his evidence. But as things stand now, whatever Eckert recommends, his rulings would likely leave much of the Garcia file private.
Prince Ali’s fellow vice-presidents Jeffrey Webb of Cayman Islands and Jim Boyce of Northern Ireland have also said they want Garcia’s work to be published.
FIFA and Qatar’s World Cup organisers have been fending off allegations of corruption ever since the Gulf state was awarded the 2022 tournament and Russia handed 2018 host status. Prince Ali says only full disclosure of Garcia’s report would help repair FIFA’s image. “This will only help the football community move ahead in reforming our institutions in the best interest of the sport,” he said.
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