FIFA to Investigate Award of Qatar World Cup

 

It is the scandal that just will not disappear.

At the time that the World Cup hosting rights were awarded to Russia for 2018 and Qatar for 2022, many of the accusations of ‘administrative impropriety’ could be dismissed as crude sour grapes from the media in the losing countries.

Had the FIFA aristocracy top brass stuck with each other, it may have never unraveled but Mohammad Bin Hammam, a Qatari and the driving force behind his country’s bid, challenged FIFA President Sepp Blatter for his post.

A civil war ensued and Blatter usually wins those. Bin Hammam was found guilty of attempting to bribe CONCACAF delegates to vote for him with cash filled brown envelopes. The scandal also took down CONCACAF President Jack Warner.

Since Hammam’s subsequent exposure and expulsion from his role in world football, the Qatari World Cup organisers have attempted naturally to distance themselves from him.

That subsequent PR effort may be insufficient as inevitably one investigation uncovered something else, and those held accountable tried to bring others down with them.

Al-Arabiya News is reporting this morning that a review of the awarding of the hosting rights to Qatar is among those things the new FIFA Corruption investigator Michael Garcia will examine. Garcia carries the title of joint chief investigator of FIFA’s ethics committee. The 51-year-old American Garcia has shared the post with a German, Munich human rights lawyer Hans-Joachim Eckert since July.

Garcia made the revelations while speaking to the Sportschau program on German TV channel ARD and the WDR Hintergrundmagazin Sport Inside show.

It was Garcia’s first international interview and he also revealed that the award of the 2006 tournament to Germany retroactively falls within his ambit as will the Russian World Cup of 2018. The role of ISL, the bankrupt sports rights marketing firm will also be examined. The marketing agency owned the World Cup television rights until it went bankrupt in 2001 with debts of around $300m.

Sepp Blatter himself will also come under investigation.

“The more important a person is, the more necessary it is to investigate him,” Garcia said of Blatter to the German interviewer.

In the case of ISL, FIFA recently published Swiss court documents which give evidence that  ISL paid millions of dollars in bribes to Blatter’s predecessor former FIFA President Joao Havelange who resigned days before an ethics hearing, and ex-FIFA executive committee member Ricardo Teixeira who was once Havelange’s son-in-law.

Garcia was a lawyer who once investigated and prosecuted the New York mafia and Wall Street financiers. In 2008, he led the federal investigation into former governor of New York Eliot Spitzer.

How serious is it? Around the world, various commentators are taking a range of viewpoints. One observer in India thinks the investigation could even threaten Qatar’s hosting rights:

“Three major investigations into corruption in global soccer are putting the credibility of major soccer associations and World Cup 2022 host Qatar to the test and could challenge the Gulf state’s successful bid as well as a massive Asian soccer rights contract.”

The stakes are therefore incredibly high. Furthermore, given the calibre of the nations who were overlooked to award the games to the Gulf nation, removing the World Cup from Qatar and asking another to fill in, is not logistically impossible. The number of potential alternatives to Russia in 2018 is even greater.

In May 2011, Blatter himself categorically refused to rule out pulling the games from Qatar after the Sunday Times published allegations originally made to a UK Parliamentary Committee.

In the evidence presented, it was alleged that FIFA Executive Committee members Issa Hayatou and Jacques Anouma took bribes of $1.5m each to vote for Qatar.

Garcia and Eckert have a big responsibility. In England, Australia, the USA and Spain among others, football associations are watching with interest.

Also See: 

What if Qatar did bribe voters? – May 2011