By Andrew Warshaw
November 18 – The two FIFA ethics chiefs at the centre of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding investigation have agreed to meet face-to-face on Thursday to try and agree over what should and shouldn’t be published and resolve their untimely dispute that has heaped embarrassment on world football’s governing body.
As one of the biggest sports politics stories of recent times rumbles on, FIFA’s German judge Hans Joachim Eckert and American prosecutor Michael Garcia, who carried out the investigation into World Cup bidding practices for the 2018and 2022 events, are under increasing pressure to form a common approach and stave off mounting criticism of FIFA in its efforts to implement genuine reform.
Last week’s 42-page statement from Eckert that cleared Russia and Qatar of any wrongdoing and found there were no grounds for re-opening the bid process was greeted with general scepticism.
That scepticism turned to ridicule when, just hours later, Garcia, head of FIFA’s investigatory chamber who spent 18 months probing allegations of malpractise in the bidding process, declared that Eckert’s summary had misrepresented his own findings in the full 430-page report and announced he would take his case to FIFA’s appeal committee.
Garcia’s response ignited a storm around what was expected to bring closure (probably always an unrealistic hope) to four years of media allegations of corruption that have plagued the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process since the joint ballot took place in December, 2010.
No location for Thursday’s meeting has been announced but it is understood both officials sought to meet in person after Garcia, a former US attorney, described Eckert’s summation as “incomplete and erroneous.”
Garcia is likely to be seeking full publication of the report, something that other FIFA executive have in recent weeks also called for. However, with Garcia having promised confidentiality this raises more issues and potentially considerably more legal challenges.
Swiss law professor Mark Pieth, the anti-corruption expert who led the FIFA-appointed team that recommended a swathe of reform proposals – many of which were implemented, some of which weren’t – told The Associated Press that Garcia should leak the full report in order to take a stand, even it would lead to him being dismissed.
“We simply have to have Garcia’s text,” Pieth said. “My experience is that in the U.S. everything is leaked for political purposes. Everything is leaked if it helped. Let’s hope he will really leak it.”
In his summary of Garcia’s investigation, Eckert, who insists the full report cannot be published because of confidentiality pledges made to witnesses, said there was wrongdoing by Russia, Qatar and several others among the nine candidates, but “of very limited scope … far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it.”
The Spain-Portugal 2018 bid was conspicuous by not being named despite widespread allegations of vote-trading with Qatar. That could be one area Garcia is unhappy with. It is also rumoured that the full report is highly critical of individual executive committee members. Which was again left out of Eckert’s summary.
Or perhaps the fallout from last week’s statement is all about misinterpretation since Garcia is understood to speak no German while Eckert’s English is believed to be patchy.
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