FIFA are ‘untouchable’

DAVID GREEN, director of the Serious Fraud Office, wasted more than an hour yesterday going round in circles with MPs on the sports select committee explaining why the SFO have remained on the fringes of the FIFA scandal.

Green said: ‘No one would be more pleased to open an investigation into FIFA than us. But we are limited by statute to the most serious and complex stuff. We can’t touch FIFA as things stand and nothing has emerged that would warrant an SFO inquiry.’

The SFO are, however, looking at potential money-laundering offences surrounding the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids.

One of them involves an alleged £270,000 payment — which may have gone through London — by the Australia 2022 committee to arch FIFA rogue Jack Warner.

LORD GOLDSMITH, the former solicitor general and once a member of FIFA’s independent government committee, told the DCMS committee it was ‘absurd’ that the Garcia report into those murky 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids was still under wraps. He said: ‘The world needs to see that report. It is unsatisfactory in the extreme.’ OLD-SCHOOL FA councillor Ron Barston, 82, who set in motion the ridiculous inquiry into independent director Heather Rabbatts breaking ranks to support Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro, is regarded as a stickler for the most unimportant detail.

He called for an FA report to be amended from ‘penalty shoot-out’ to ‘kicks from the penalty mark’ as that was the correct terminology.

Meanwhile, members of the FA Inclusion Advisory Board, chaired by Rabbatts, are to question FA chief executive Martin Glenn and governance director Darren Bailey about ‘deep concerns’ over handling of anti-discrimination cases. They have also written in support of Rabbatts to FA chairman Greg Dyke.