No smoking gun in FIFA report
SOCHI, Russia — FIFA on Tuesday published an American investigator’s report into the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, acting, it said, “for the sake of transparency.”
The decision to publish the report, which had been kept secret for more than two years, details bribes and vote-trading in the bidding process, and came a day after a German newspaper revealed that it had obtained a copy and planned to publish the report’s details.
Fresh disclosures of possible ethics violations in the bidding processes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were expected to emerge after the newspaper, Bild, revealed on Monday that it had obtained a copy of the previously unreleased, 430page report.
The report, compiled by Michael J. Garcia, a former U.S. attorney who had served as FIFA’s chief ethics investigator, detailed the findings of a months-long examination of the voting procedures — widely reported to have been tainted by corruption — that awarded the two World Cup tournaments on the same day in 2010.
What the Garcia report did not have, in the end, was any hard evidence that the committees for Russia and Qatar had used bribes to secure the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, any smoking gun that might have compelled FIFA to consider moving either of the events or reopening the bidding for them.
Those involved in a Russian bid backed by Vladimir Putin gave limited cooperation to Garcia’s team which found no evidence of undue influence. Putin met six of 22 FIFA voters before the December 2010 elections.
Qatar’s ultimate victory over the United States tested FIFA’s bid rules to the limit. The bid team utilized a full range of lavishly funded state and sports agencies to help influence the vote, along with advisers who raised Garcia’s suspicions.
Garcia’s report was once a holy grail for FIFA critics who hoped it would be explosive and force a re-run of the World Cup hosting votes.
Many believed bid leaders in Russia and Qatar must have engaged in wrongdoing to earn the votes of a FIFA executive committee lineup in 2010 that has since been widely discredited.
“Bid teams operated in an environment where a number of (voters) did not hesitate to exploit a system that in certain respects did not bind them to the same rules applicable to bid teams,” Garcia wrote, noting that some FIFA officials “sought to obtain personal favors or benefits.”
Some of those same FIFA officials have since been indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Garcia’s team did not have the evidence-gathering powers of a criminal probe and it was clear they would be hampered even before starting a globe-trotting 20132014 investigation.
His report details how voters refused to be interviewed, bid teams from Russia and Spain were evasive, and potential key witnesses could not be tracked down.
Garcia’s work also has been overtaken since he delivered it to FIFA’s then-ethics judge in September 2014.
The 42-page summary written by German judge Hans Joachim Eckert was published two months later and disputed by Garcia. Their public falling out prompted FIFA to pass the dossier and supporting evidence to Switzerland’s attorney general for review.
The significance of Garcia’s work might be seen once Swiss authorities have completed their work. It started with suspected money laundering linked to the World Cup bids and extended to other areas of FIFA business.
Around 25 investigations have been launched, the Swiss federal prosecution office said this month, using more than 170 suspect bank transactions as evidence.
Swiss investigators have shared evidence in recent years with the FBI and U.S. prosecutors, who have indicted or taken guilty pleas from more than 40 football and marketing officials.
Russia has repeatedly denied wrongdoing since 2010, though the report confirmed that leased computers used by Russia’s bid campaign were later destroyed.
Staffers’ email accounts were never retrieved from Google for Garcia’s deputy who oversaw the Russia section of a nine-candidate investigation. Russia had previously banned Garcia from the country over his prosecution of a Russian arms dealer in the U.S.
Qatari organizers of the 2022 tournament have also consistently denied wrongdoing. They declined to comment Tuesday.
FIFA forced publication of the Garcia Report on a rest day at the Confederations Cup — the rehearsal tournament in Russia to test its readiness for the 2018 World Cup.
“For the sake of transparency, FIFA welcomes the news that this report has now been finally published,” world football’s governing body said in a statement.
Garcia’s team found “no evidence” Russia’s bid team or Vladimir Putin, then prime minister and now president, unduly influenced FIFA voters.
In helping the United States’ bid, then-President Barack Obama hosted three FIFA voters at the White House in two separate visits. Former President Bill Clinton was lobbying voters in Zurich until hours before they approved Qatar in a 14-8 vote.
“Leaders of most, if not all, 2018 and 2022 bid nations spoke directly with FIFA Executive Committee members,” Garcia noted.
The then-Emir of Qatar was closely tied to his gasrich nation’s bid before he lifted the World Cup trophy in Zurich on voting day.
“There was one specific incident concerning ‘government involvement’ with the Qatar bid that did raise concerns,” Garcia wrote of the Emir hosting South America’s FIFA voters who flew by private jet to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
All three voters have since been identified in a U.S. justice department indictment for taking bribes from broadcast deals.