By Tim Röhn
December 8 – When the rulers of world football travel in the week before Christmas to the Moroccan royal city of Marrakesh for the Club World Cup, there will be more than usual to discuss during the pre-Christmas sessions.
While FIFA president Sepp Blatter and his executive committee colleagues will be present, as well as the members of the supervisory bodies, an important figure is missing. Michael Garcia, who triggered the chaos with his investigation into corruption and conflicts of interest around the World Cup award has, reported the ‘Welt am Sonntag’, not received an invitation. The word from Blatter’s environment is that there was simply no reason for Garcia to show. Garcia could not be reached for comment.
Even if all the accused plead innocent, that the former New York prosecutor is missing from the Morocco guest list is not a surprise. For some time, there are indications that the FIFA bosses have enough of their chief investigator. When the high level football International Football Arena conference took place last Wednesday in FIFA headquarters in Zurich, the rumour was that Garcia was no longer in office – a rumour which turned out to be untrue. The fact that it recently took several hours before FIFA published a statement from its supposedly independent investigator on their website, surprised even the most uninvolved observers.
Blatter showed how great his aversion to the investigator has become at the gala celebrations of the Asian Football Association (AFC) last Monday. In a speech to delegates he reiterated that the 2022 World Cup will definitely be played in Qatar. “2022, it is Qatar, and ladies and gentleman, believe me, with all that has been said around the world by whom? Those not involved with what happens in football. The World Cup in 2022 will be played in Qatar,” said the 78-year-old.
But Blatter knows better than anyone that exactly this ‘talk’ has been fuelled by the irregularities Garcia of all people found in the World Cup award to Qatar. It was him who criticised the final report of Ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert as “false” and “incomplete”.
Garcia and Eckert have agreed that Domenico Scala, the chairman of the Audit and Compliance Committee, should analyse the investigation report again. Scala has forwarded the documents to law firms for expert opinion – and it is still unclear when the results of these opinions will be delivered. Meanwhile the investigations of the FBI, the Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the Swiss Federal Prosecutor into the World Cup awards are on-going, in the Swiss case, just beginning.
It is still unknown the full ethics charges as they relate to Qatar but what Blatter has effectively done is kill the debate on whether Qatar will host 2022 or not. Blatter instigated the ethics investigation function two years ago with a rolling remit, the consequences of which now seem to increasingly annoy him – with the knock-on effect that Garcia is increasingly coming under attack.
But he is not the only one lined up against the American. Franz Beckenbauer and his supporters are angry that the Ethics Commission extended the investigation into ‘der Kaiser’ (the “Welt am Sonntag” reported exclusively). Beckenbauer is accused by the FIFA ethicists as being too close to members of the Australian bid at the World Cup vote in 2010.
FIFA board member and medical chief Michel D’Hooghe is similarly unamused by the investigation into him. He described the allegations against him as “bullshit” exclusively to Insideworldfootball.
Behind closed doors Garcia’s opponents rage that the Americans are driven by political ambitions and that he behaves as an “attack dog” because of that.
Garcia himself has taken his muzzle off and waits for the Appellate Committee of FIFA to rule on his objection to Eckert’s final report. And after that? The FIFA Congress could drop him in May, but it is possible that he could leave before.
One thing is for sure, the noise around this show will not be stopping soon.