Secret report of 430 pages is the juicy details about the questionable behavior of some high chiefs from the world of football, as well as other people, ready to meet any requirement. Huge amounts of money are unaccounted for. Senior leaders act suspicious, capricious, and sometimes probably illegal. They violate and ignore the rules, or just customize them to fit their plans.
This document is called “Report Garcia” in honor of those Americans, but the FIFA Committee for ethics kept it secret for over two years. On Tuesday, FIFA unexpectedly she published it. For the first time was confirmed, and in some cases revealed long-awaited details of the investigation of the process of submission and consideration of bids to host the world Cup in 2018 and 2022. The governing body of world football FIFA has published the report “in the interests of transparency”. However, he did it only after a German newspaper reported on Monday that it has received a copy of this document and intends to publish it of the ugly details in parts.
The report was prepared in 2014 by former us Prosecutor Michael Garcia (Michael J. Garcia), who worked as the head of the investigative chamber of the ethics Committee of FIFA. It included the results of its investigation of the election of the host countries of the 2018 and 2022 held in December 2010 and, as reported by the media, have raised doubts over alleged corruption. The organizers of the 2018 and 2022 world Cup were Russia and Qatar, respectively.
But in the report of Garcia, there was no conclusive evidence that Russia and Qatar were selected as tournament organizers in exchange for bribes. It does not contain undisputed evidence that could persuade FIFA to move the Championships to other countries or to re-examine the applications.
But in this dossier presents a disturbing picture of serious flaws in the voting process. It has been confirmed numerous media reports that have come from different parts of the world before the vote, which refers to inappropriate and unethical behavior of people who have considered the bids and vote on which they had an impact. In the end, the report creates a sense of indecent, which often told the author Garcia.
Here are some of his conclusions.
— Although direct evidence of bribery of members of the bid Committee Qatar no, Garcia has repeatedly expressed concern about the suspicious proximity between the Qatari government and this Committee, and also about illegal actions of consultants, sought to push the Qatari bid.
— On the eve of the vote in 2010, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who at that time was Prime Minister, met with several members of the FIFA Executive Committee, with voting rights. But the actions of the Russian bid Committee there is no crime, because the author of the report found no evidence of collusion with other candidates, violations, transfer of gifts, and signs that the Russian tried to influence voting members of the Committee.
Garcia wrote in detail about how the members of the FIFA Executive Committee and other stakeholders have been ignored and criticized his questions, pretended not to know basic things, and otherwise refused to cooperate with the investigation. He expressed dissatisfaction with the limitations of its powers, stating that he could not call witnesses and suspects agenda. However, the report shows that for the votes of the members of the Executive Committee were certain direct and indirect services: the construction of a stadium in the country is a voting member of the Executive Committee, transatlantic flights on private jets, as well as a memorable scene when the 10-year-old daughter of one official was transferred two million dollars.
Based on the minutes of meetings of FIFA, the investigators came to the conclusion that the Board did not discuss the question about the Sizzling summer heat in Qatar when he claimed his application for the organization of the tournament, which is traditionally held in June and July. This is despite the fact that the FIFA inspectors have repeatedly raised this question, because it is a major concern. In those protocols, Garcia found one interesting fact: when I learned that the only option is to move the world Cup to a milder winter, FIFA secretly solved the difficult problem associated with possible litigation. She gave Fox Sports the rights to broadcast the world Cup 2026, and did it with a big discount, which must have cost her several hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the two years when the report of Garcia concealed from the public eye, he has literally acquired a mythical status.
Garcia submitted his report in 2014, stating afterwards that his team had uncovered “numerous serious problems” in the selection process. Despite calls for transparency, which was made by Garcia and some members of the FIFA Executive Committee (including one official who pleaded guilty in a separate investigation into FIFA corruption), the report was not made public.
Instead, the German Hans-Joachim Eckert (Hans-Joachim Eckert), who was working the chief judge of the FIFA Committee for ethics, has published a summary of Garcia’s report is 42 pages, which, contrary to the conclusions of its author, claimed that the voting process had no violations.
Eckert rejected all proposals that, in case of detection of violations have to re-do the procedure for consideration of applications for the tournament, and the FIFA leadership in the face of Blatter quickly announced that the case is closed.
A month later, after losing an appeal in this case, Garcia in protest resigned, stating that in the reduced acerta report contains “numerous inaccuracies and erroneous representations of facts and conclusions”.
This week again, this issue arose when the German tabloid Bild announced that it has received a copy of the report of Garcia. Received this copy of the reporter Bild Peter Rossberg (Peter Rossberg) wrote on Monday on his Facebook page that in the file there is no “convincing evidence” that the 2018 world Cup and 2022 world Cup was bought. However, he said that in the report there are important details that draws the overall picture of the “completely corrupt system.”
Did not have time to Bild to publish this exclusive footage as FIFA ahead of the newspaper by posting the report on its website Tuesday morning. In its press release, the Federation stated: “the New chairmen of the independent ethics Committee of the Maria Claudia Rojas (María Claudia Rojas) from a pre-chamber and Vassilios Skouris (Vassilios Skouris) of the arbitration chamber decided to publish the report.” FIFA underlined that its President, Gianni Infantino (Gianni Infantino) has repeatedly called for its publication.
In its statement FIFA said: “it Should be said that despite these regular requests, former Chairperson of the ethics Committee Cornel Borbély (Cornel Borbély) and Hans-Joachim Eckert has always refused to publish it”.
On Tuesday, Eckert and Borbély, who replaced Garcia at the head of the investigative chamber, made his own statement in which he denied the conclusion of FIFA.
“Until today, they said, Mr. Infantino has never contacted us on the issue of publication.”
Eckert, who said that the publication of the report was impossible because of privacy considerations, and Borbely were dismissed from their posts this year. At the time they were given to understand that the dismissal interfered with the investigation against several senior leaders of FIFA. Opponents of Pakistan complained that due to the change of leadership in the ethics Committee, filed the case postponed for months.
But on Tuesday, FIFA decided to demonstrate their moral principles.
“In the interests of transparency FIFA welcomes the news that the report is finally published,” said the Federation.
