By Andrew Warshaw
July 27 – FIFA’s two new corruption busters officially began their new roles today promising they will be totally independent and not open to accusations of bias.
Former American attorney Michael Garcia and German judge Joachim Eckert (pictured top, left and right) head a revamped, two-chamber FIFA Ethics Committee with the authority to re-examine previous cases as well as probe future claims of wrongdoing.
In his new role, Garcia is expected to look into how the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were awarded to Russia and Qatar and study further allegations of bribery involving former FIFA Presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hammam (pictured below) – suspended for 90 more days earlier this week despite having his life ban for bribery overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
He will also further investigate the infamous ISL case involving millions of dollars in World Cup kickbacks paid to former FIFA President João Havelange and his one-time son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira (pictured below, right and left).
Garcia and Eckert have been appointed for a year ahead of formal elections next May at FIFA’s annual Congress in Mauritius.
Even before hosting their first meeting, Garcia was quick to act, re-suspending Bin Hammam, this time pending the outcome of alleged misuse of Asian Football Confederation (AFC) finances, laid bare in an audit by PwC, by the 63-year-old Qatari when he was its President.
Questions are already being asked about whether Garcia was justified in hitting Bin Hammam with a second ban so quickly amid suggestions of a deliberate attempt to stop him regaining his power base.
Garcia and Eckart were cautious in explaining the action, couching their answers in legal and technical jargon.
But Garcia said: “The ban was done after careful consideration of the CAS decision and the PwC report.
“It’s not appropriate to get into a debate over what the PwC report says.
“I can say we are going to look at these and decide on the appropriate course of action going forward.”
Both officials stressed they would not be bound by any rules or limitations in their respective roles and would take “an independent and fresh look” at the whole issue of corruption which will include a whistleblower hotline for anyone to privately report any mismanagement.
“There will be no limitations over where complaints can come from,” said Garcia during a conference call at FIFA headquarters in Zurich.
“It’s important to have a pipeline to receive complaints and it’s important to open that up,” he said.
Both promised to do their utmost to clean up FIFA, tarnished for the last 18 months by unprecedented scandal.
“If there is conduct in the past that warrants investigation, I will do it,” Garcia said.
“There are no limitations at all on what we will be looking at.”
Although the CAS lifted Bin Hammam’s ban because of lack of enough evidence against him, it conceded he was “more likely than not” the source of monies brought into Trinidad and allegedly paid in bundles to Caribbean officials.
“There are many facts and allegations in there,” Garcia said of the court’s decision.
The old Ethics Committee was revamped following a recommendation by a panel of FIFA-commissioned anti-corruption experts, led by Swiss professor Mark Pieth, which found there were too many suspect cases that had been insufficiently investigated.
With the old body mistrusted by so many within FIFA and the public at large, Eckert, who will lead the adjudication side of the new two-chamber committee, said he and Garcia had no alternative but to be honest and truthful in their deliberations.
“We will not accept any influence exerted on us,” Eckert declared.
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