By Andrew Warshaw
February 10 – Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, one of the three candidates vying to take over from FIFA president Sepp Blatter, is the latest official to express his concern at FIFA allegedly changing a key independent report into reform of the organisation.
The German magazine Der Spiegel claimed at the weekend that FIFA’s legal chief altered references to Blatter in the final version of the report in order to present him in a better light.
The original document by Swiss professor Mark Pieth, commissioned by FIFA to head up an independent governance team to present recommendations for greater transparency, had raised questions over whether or not Blatter knew about the ISL bribery scandal 15 years ago.
UEFA, who were cited in Pieth’s final version for blocking important reforms, have already reacted angrily to the apparent tampering and now Prince Ali, the outgoing FIFA vice-president, has joined the line of attack.
FIFA has insisted nothing untoward took place and argues it was standard practice for the organisation that commissioned the report to make comments before publication.
But Prince Ali has described the claims in Der Spiegel as “deeply worrying” and is anxious that the now infamous Garcia Report into alleged corruption over the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process, due to be published later this year in redacted form, might suffer the same fate.
Former US attorney Michael Garcia, who headed the investigatory half of FIFA’s ethics committee and conducted the probe, quit in December after disputing the contents of a summary of his report released by German Judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, head of the adjudicatory side of the ethics committee.
“Media reports over the weekend are a reminder of why we need Michael Garcia’s report into FIFA’s World Cup bidding process to be published in full,” said Prince Ali in a statement.
“There does appear to be evidence of interference in the drafting of the so-called independent Pieth report by FIFA. This is deeply worrying and suggests something is not right at the heart of FIFA governance.
“Without publishing the Garcia report in full, FIFA faces the ongoing public suspicion interference may also have occurred in that case.”
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