By Andrew Warshaw
November 20 – FIFA president Sepp Blatter has personally rejected English FA chairman Greg Dyke’s demand for Michael Garcia’s World Cup investigation report into allegations of misconduct surrounding the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids to be published in full.
Dyke wrote to every FIFA executive committee member calling for “urgent action” following Garcia’s move to appeal against the decision by Fifa ethics committee judge Hans-Joachim Eckert to clear Russia and Qatar to host the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, having found no serious breaches of bidding rules by either nation.
England’s 2018 bid campaign, by contrast, was criticised and Dyke said the “failure” to publish Garcia’s full findings, and Garcia’s own response, had “resulted in a further decline in public confidence of FIFA. We cannot go on like this. Complete transparency is required if the actions of all those who bid, including England 2018, are to be judged fairly.”
“I know some of you believe that FIFA’s reputation in England is the result of an obsession amongst the English media with FIFA and I know Mr Blatter sees their reports as an unfair attack on the organisation he leads.
“However, in England we see it differently. The reports… do provide compelling evidence of wrongdoing. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘racist’ or ‘an attack on FIFA’ as Mr Blatter described them at the FIFA Congress in Brazil. Urgent action is needed if confidence in FIFA is to be rebuilt in England. The FA is of the view that this action should start with the full publication of Mr Garcia’s report.”
Modernists among FIFA’s exco publicly and privately support the call for full publication. But Blatter implied Dyke didn’t understand the process, saying FIFA was bound by an “obligation of confidentiality” that would adversely affect England as well as everyone else if it was broken.
“FIFA would violate not only its rules and regulations but also Swiss law by making public the report in question,” replied Blatter saying everyone in the report would have to give consent to publication, an almost impossible situation.
“We have been advised that publication of the report might be permissible if the persons and entities included in the report consent to such publication and waive any legal action they might be entitled to bring.”
“Against this background, I would therefore like to ask you whether we may interpret your letter as providing consent on behalf of any natural or legal person affected by the parts of the report relating to the England World Cup bid (i.e. Inter alia, the bid team/committee, FA employees, consultants etc) to publication of the report and as a corresponding waiver of any legal action in the event of such publication.”
FIFA filed a criminal complaint in Switzerland this week against unnamed individuals linked to the report and Blatter added on FIFA’s website: “I note your opinion that FIFA’s reputation in England is rather low, and that you consider immediate publication of the report… an appropriate means with which to build this reputation. We understand your line of reasoning but we kindly ask that you also consider our position and our perspective.”
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