By Andrew Warshaw
October 17 – The German judge overseeing FIFA’s investigation into possible corruption surrounding the 2018 and 2022 World Cup ballot has re-iterated once and for all that the 430-page report submitted to him cannot be published in full for legal reasons.
But Hans-Joachim Eckert, head of the adjudicatory arm of FIFA’s ethics committee, has promised to release a number of findings by the middle of next month.
Eckert’s comments, in an interview on FIFA’s website, confirm what Insideworldfootball has been told by a number of sources who say they were specifically promised confidentiality by Michael Garcia when the former US attorney carried out his two-year probe.
Garcia himself has called for full disclosure of his potentially explosive file as have a number of leading FIFA powerbrokers in order to enhance transparency and restore the image of world football’s governing body.
But Eckert, who has been under pressure to provide some kind of clarification, has again made it clear this will not be possible because of the code of ethics’ strict rules governing the interviews made with some 75 witnesses.
Highlighting a grey area that has split opinion, Eckert says he will deliver a statement by mid-November at the latest – but that it won’t be and can’t be full exposure.
“The statement will contain an overview of the investigation report, a summary of the main findings, conclusions and recommendations of the report, as well as a brief evaluation of the same,” he said.
“Publishing the report in full would actually put the FIFA Ethics Committee and FIFA itself in a very difficult situation legally.”
“What is more, we have to respect the personal rights of the people mentioned in the report, which in the case of full publication of the report would in all likelihood not be possible.”
Earlier this week, Garcia, head of the ethics committee’s investigatory chamber, stirred up the debate in a speech in London when he appeared to question the efficacity of FIFA’s methods and called for a culture change.
But Eckert insisted there was no rift between the pair.
“Michael Garcia has never said that the report should be 100% published,” he told Fifa.com. “He merely said that the ‘appropriate’ publication of his report should be authorised. The deputy chairman of the adjudicatory chamber and I now have the task of drawing up this appropriate form for publication.”
“Part of my current examination involves deciding what form this appropriate publication should take, whether this means issuing a statement regarding the investigation report or whether certain parts of the investigation report will be published while maintaining anonymity, or indeed a combination of these possibilities.
“This decision is exclusively a matter for the adjudicatory chamber – neither the investigatory chamber nor the Fifa Executive Committee can decide. The main requirement is that personal rights must not be damaged.”
All nine candidates for 2018 and 2022 were interviewed as part of the investigation as were the FIFA executive committee members at the time, many of whom have since departed. Eckert stressed that it wasn’t only Garcia who carried out the relevant interviews and wrote up the evidence.
“It must be pointed out that the main report has been produced not by Michael Garcia alone, but also by the deputy chairman of the investigatory chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee Cornel Borbély. In fact, the report into Russia and the USA was produced solely by Cornel Borbély,” added Eckert.
“This is because Michael Garcia was unable to take part in some parts of the investigation due to the possibility of conflicts of interest, for example in the case of the American bid [as he is a US citizen].”
Eckert said last month that his verdicts may not go down well with the old guard at FIFA. “Many won’t like what I am going to tell them,” he warned at the time. In his interview with Fifa.com, he explained why he had not been able to release anything yet.
“The report of the investigation into the bidding process for the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups comprises hundreds of pages as well as numerous annexes. Carefully working through all this material takes time. As things currently stand, I expect the statement to be ready by mid-November at the latest.”
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