Fifa’s ethics committee judge will on Thursday deliver his summary of a long awaited investigation into the controversial World Cup bidding process but is not believed to have uncovered evidence that would justify stripping Qatar of the 2022 tournament.
The behaviour of several of the bidders involved in the convoluted and ill-conceived dual bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments is expected to be called into question, including Russia, Australia, Qatar and England.
Individuals who are no longer involved in football – including Jack Warner, Mohammed bin Hammam and Reynald Temarii – are expected to be criticised but the summary of the report does not at this stage name any other names.
Nor is there believed to be a “smoking gun” that links the behaviour of Mohammed bin Hammam, the Qatari former Asian Football Confederation president who was banned for life for offering bribes to officials during his challenge for the Fifa presidency, with the Qatar 2022 bid.
Russia, which won the right to stage the 2018 tournament, is understood to be criticised for its failure to co-operate with the investigation and is believed to have claimed that its computer systems were wiped in the wake of its victory so few email trails exist.
Hans-Joachim Eckert, the German judge who is head of the judiciary arm of the Fifa ethics committee, will produce a summary of the main findings, conclusions and recommendations of the investigation conducted over 18 months by Michael Garcia.
Aside from Russia and Qatar, the bidding nations comprised England, Holland-Belgium and Spain-Portugal for 2018, and the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea for 2022.
According to sources, the “plague on all their houses” nature of the summary makes it even less likely that the investigation will lead to either Russia or Qatar being stripped of the tournament.
The Sunday Times uncovered evidence that Bin Hammam had made a series of major payments to football officials during his presidential bid that amounted to millions of dollars, which coincided with the Qatar 2022 World Cup campaign, leading to genuine concern in Doha that Fifa would strip them of the tournament.
Australia’s bid, which cost taxpayers $40m and received just a single vote, also came under scrutiny for development funds paid and gifts distributed in parts of the football world in which influential Fifa executive committee members had votes.
Garcia was compromised from the start by the fact that he had no power to seize phone records or email traffic and those corrupt former Fifa officials who are no longer involved in the game could not be compelled to talk.
Those involved in the ill-starred England 2018 bid are believed to have co-operated freely with Garcia. As a result England’s bid – which cost £21m and gained just two votes – is likely to be disproportionately criticised for relatively minor infractions.
They could include the Mulberry handbags given to the wives of executive committee members during a visit to London and the decision to pay for a Concacaf dinner in the Caribbean fiefdom of the controversial ex-Fifa vice president Jack Warner.
Despite limited powers, Garcia has been determined to investigate as best he can, travelling to each of the bidding nations to gather evidence. Garcia is banned from Russia under a tit-for-tat response to US sanctions and the reports into the Russian bid and the USA were compiled by Garcia’s deputy, Cornel Borbély, to avoid conflicts of interest.
The bid process was hit by a series of corruption claims, including the allegation that Qatar colluded with Spain to swap votes and evidence that two members of the Fifa executive committee sought sweeteners in return for their vote.The 42-page summary of the former New York district attorney’s 430-page report has itself been mired in controversy as Fifa has come under pressure to publish the investigation in full.
With whistleblowers interviewed by Garcia having been promised anonymity, Eckert has insisted that he will only publish “a summary of the main findings, conclusions and recommendations of the report, as well as a brief evaluation of the same”.
Others, including Garcia himself, have pushed for the full publication of the report with names redacted. The investigator is understood to have made a number of recommendations about how the bidding process could be improved in future, as well as recommending sanctions against certain individuals.
It remains unclear whether Eckert will name names at this stage, promising sanctions by spring next year. Regardless, he has said that any decision on whether to strip Russia or Qatar of the World Cup would be taken by the Fifa executive committee and not by the ethics committee.
Much of the credibility of the report rests on whether Fifa’s twin chamber ethics committee, set up in the wake of the avalanche of corruption allegations that engulfed world football’s governing body in 2011, is seen as truly independent.
Meanwhile, the FBI is continuing to investigate claims of tax evasion and money laundering related to former Fifa executives.
