By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
November 14 – FIFA are distancing themselves from a suggestion by their leading financial scrutineer that Qatar could be stripped as 2022 World Cup hosts by the world governing body’s independent ethics committee if the Gulf state is found to have broken any bidding rules.
With Qatar back in the spotlight as it prepares to host the latest in a series of high-profile promotional sports business conferences in Doha, Insideworldfootball has learned that senior FIFA officials were surprised by comments made recently by Domenico Scala, chairman of its audit and compliance committee.
Scala told a Swiss newspaper that should the ethics committee, whose chief investigator Michael Garcia is currently conducting an investigation into all 2018 and 2022 candidates, find rule-breaking activity about the way Qatar operated, a revote should take place.
“Should Qatar demonstrably be seen to have paid bribes in the run-up to the World Cup award then it could possibly be voided,” Scala said. “Then the [bidding] process should be repeated.”
A senior source at FIFA has confirmed that Scala was not authorised to make such remarks and that even if any wrongdoing is uncovered by Garcia, the ethics committee can only sanction individuals and has no power to overturn the decision to award 2022 to the Gulf state.
“If Garcia finds something which was wrong, the ethics committee has the right to take sanctions,” said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But does he have the right to say ‘based on what I have found the World Cup should not be played in Qatar?’ No he does not have that right.”
Only the executive committee that originally chose Russia and Qatar to host the 2018 and 2022 tournaments respectively can make such a decision, the source said.
Qatar has consistently insisted it did nothing wrong and that it won its landslide victory in December 2010, fair and square. Blatter visited the country last week and discussed with the country’s new emir the issue of conditions for migrant workers following highly publicised reports of severe mistreatment.
After the meeting Blatter said he had “reconfirmed to the Emir” that the World Cup will definitely be played in Qatar.
With the debate over whether to switch the event to winter to avoid the Gulf heat on-going and various football ‘stakeholders’ being consulted on timings, Blatter also re-iterated that he favoured November rather than January to avoid any clash with the winter Olympics.
This weekend and early next week, Qatar hosts the annual Aspire4Sport summit during which 2022 organisers are due to make an announcement about stadium infrastructure and provide an update on preparations. Over 3,000 delegates are expected to attend.
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