By Andrew Warshaw
November 27 – Three current FIFA executive committee members plus German legend Franz Beckenbauer, all of whom voted in the controversial 2018 and 2022 World Cup ballot, are reported to be facing formal disciplinary action as a result of Michael Garcia’s two-year investigation into potential corruption surrounding the vote.
Along with Beckenbauer, Spain’s Fifa vice-president Ángel María Villar Llona, medical commission chief Michel D’Hooghe from Belgium and Thailand’s Worawi Makudi have had formal cases opened against them by Fifa’s ethics committee, according to unnamed sources quoted by Britain’s Press Association and Germany’s Die Welt newspaper, as has Chile’s Harold Mayne-Nicholls who led the Fifa technical inspection team that evaluated all nine candidates for 2018 and 2022.
Fifa, which has also lodged a separate criminal complaint with the Swiss attorney general, refused to comment on what can only be described as a bombshell leak, issuing a statement saying they “cannot confirm or deny any such information as matters related to the 2018/2022 enquiry are solely handled by the investigatory chamber of the independent Fifa ethics committee. As such we have passed on your enquiry to the Ethics Committee accordingly.”
In his recent summary of Garcia’s 430-page report, effectively closing the case against Russia and Qatar, ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert nevertheless made it clear that separate probes could still be opened against specific individuals.
But their names were not expected to be released so quickly and the fact that four of them are among those who took the decision to select Russia for 2018 and Qatar for 2022 is bound to increase pressure on Fifa both to publish Garcia’s full report – even though Fifa President Sepp Blatter insists that is impossible under current ethics rules pertaining to confidentiality – and to re-run the joint ballot of Dec, 2010.
Although the ethics committee can only take action against individuals, the executive committee – the body which voted – is understood to technically have the authority to order a revote though that in itself is a grey area since so many voting members are no longer there and have been replaced.
Quite why Mayne-Nicholls is under investigation is unclear since it was his inspection team which cautioned against holding the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, ranking the Gulf state lowest of all the candidates.
Beckenbauer, who has retired from Fifa after a long career in administration, was widely believed to have voted for Russia in 2018 and Australia in 2022 and was briefly censured for failing to comply with Garcia’s investigation. The 90-day ban was lifted before it even got into its stride when the German World Cup icon subsequently co-operated and answered all the questions put to him.
Within three hours of the list of names of those under investigation being leaked, d’Hooghe, who has long insisted on confidentiality, told InsideWorldFootball by email that he had “clarified everything in front of the ethics committee”.
Arguably the most significant name identified was that of Villar Llona, head of the Spanish FA and of Fifa’s legal committee. Ever since he released his summary of Garcia’s findings, Eckert has failed to explain why he left out any reference to the joint Spain-Portugal bid, the only candidate omitted.
What Eckert’s summary DID say, however, was that one of the federations involved in the bid process was deemed to have been “particularly uncooperative”. Back in 2011, it should be noted, Blatter himself was quoted as saying “there was a bundle of votes between Spain and Qatar.”
Tellingly, Villar Llona, very much one of the Fifa old guard, is understood to have been among a handful of exco members who tried and failed to shut down the Garcia probe back in March whilst it was in full swing, according to information leaked to this website and two other media organisations.
After Garcia and Eckert met last week to try and iron out their differences over what should and shouldn’t be published (Garcia is still appealing against Eckert’s version), they agreed that the full report should be passed to Domenico Scala, chair of Fifa’s audit committee, who would decide how much should be made available to the executive committee.
But given that three members of that executive committee are now apparently under investigation, it remains to be seen how much of the report can be shared – or whether the three will have to excuse themselves whenever it is up for discussion, adding yet another layer of confusion to an ever-deepening saga.
As for Mayne-Nicholls, the former head of Chilean football is now in Dubai attending a conference from where he was quoted as saying any investigation would not impact on his reputation or his decision whether or not to take on Blatter for the Fifa presidency next May since he had done nothing wrong.