This clears Qatar (2022 hosts) and Russia (2018 hosts) of any wrongdoing, but criticises the English and Australian Football Associations for engaging in improper practices; the English FA is accused of damaging "the image of Fifa and the bidding process" via its interactions with the disgraced Jack Warner.
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/30031405
The catch?
Michael Garcia, who actually conducted the investigation, is now actively disowning FIFA's official 'summary' of his report, which FIFA still refuse to release in full (and which has reportedly only been seen by 4 people):
Michael Garcia, who headed the investigation, is now having his say on the report (written by the judge Hans-Joachim Eckert).
Michael Garcia says Eckert’s decision “contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts. I intend to appeal this decision to the FIFA Appeal Committee.”
http://www.theguardian.com/football/liv ... e-reaction - see at 12:11.
So FIFA, continuing to show an amazing capacity for buggering this up, have managed to put themselves in a position where the individual they asked to conduct the independent investigation is refusing to recognise FIFA's official summary of his findings, and where said individual will launch a formal legal appeal against the official summary of his findings because he's publicly stated that the official summary is wrong.
So two questions:
1) Should FIFA continue to try and stop the release of the full Garcia report?
2) Can FIFA possibly do anything even more incompetent to make this increasingly uncomfortable farce any worse?
The answers, incidentally, are "no" and "oh, probably".
Edit:
There's now more detail on Garcia's dramatic intervention to disown the FIFA summary of his report:
Fifa’s probe into the controversial bidding race for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups has taken another twist after its own investigator Michael Garcia complained that a summary of his report that cleared Qatar of substantive wrongdoing misrepresented his conclusions.
Garcia, a former New York district attorney, has spent 18 months investigating the convoluted and controversial World Cup race that ended with the selection of Russia for 2018 and Qatar for 2022.
But when German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert today closed the investigation after ruling that there was not enough evidence to justify re-opening the process, a furious Garcia said the summary he had published did not reflect his findings.
“Today’s decision by the Chairman of the Adjudicatory Chamber contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions detailed in the Investigatory Chamber’s report,” said Garcia, who has spent 18 months gathering evidence from the nine bidding nations and interviewed more than 75 witnesses.
Full story: http://www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... ics-report
