The plot thickens.
After publishing their report into alleged corruption during the 2018/2022 World Cup biding process last week, FIFA will now further review their findings.
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World soccer’s governing body cleared hosts Russia and Qatar from any wrongdoing last week but now both countries have been thrown back under the spotlight after this seemingly never-ending saga took yet another dramatic twist.
American prosecutor Michael Garcia -- who had labelled FIFA’s 42-page report on his two-year investigation as “erroneous” -- met with FIFA’s ethics judge Joachim Eckert in Zurich on Thursday and they have called for Domenico Scala, the independent chairman of FIFA’s financial monitoring panel, to study Garcia’s 430-page report further.
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It is proposed that Scala, a Swiss businessman, will then recommend certain details of the confidential report to be discussed by FIFA’s executive committee when they next meet on Dec. 18-19 in Marrakech, Morocco.
Garcia had appealed against the conclusions made in Eckert’s 42-page report on his findings, saying that it “contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions.” Since then he has also called for his report to be made public but FIFA president Sepp Blatter has been tentative on that topic and cited “legal issues” for not making the report public.
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Several whistleblowers have since come out of the shadows to complain that evidence they handed to FIFA was not listed in Eckert’s report, with some tell harrowing stories about their lives since speaking up about alleged corruption they witnessed. While the English FA have been warned by Blatter about calling for the report to be published, plus UEFA are said to be thinking about breaking away from FIFA.
The public are not convinced that FIFA’s report into World Cup corruption has been done correctly, and now they have all but admitted that themselves as a review of their process will be carried out.
Let’s wait and see what happens.