FIFA officials caught up in new bribery allegations

FIVE officials with connections to FIFA and who were all involved in the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups are at the centre of a Swiss criminal investigation, according to the man who wants to be FIFA’s next president.

Jerome Champagne, a former longstanding FIFA insider who is the only currently declared rival to Sepp Blatter for next year’s presidential race, has told the Irish Mail on Sunday that if any of the five are found guilty of wrong-doing, the entire bidding process should be invalidated.

Russia was awarded the 2018 tournament and Qatar the 2022 event in a vote that happened four years ago next month.

But corruption allegations have persistently swirled around those decisions and FIFA announced last week they had lodged a criminal complaint with the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland into ‘the possible misconduct of individual persons in connection with the awarding of the hosting rights of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups’.

No information has been confirmed by FIFA about the number of individuals or their identities, although it is believed more than one are FIFA ExCo voters who influenced the destination of the 2018 and 2022 events.

This development came amid the ongoing controversy of the FIFA ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert’s summary of FIFA investigator Michael Garcia’s investigation into the process.

‘I am a strong defender of the principle of innocent until proven guilty but it is clear that what is at stake is enormous,’ Champagne told the Mail.

‘We need to know how the voting unfolded and how it was influenced. Even if one vote was improperly influenced that is too many.

‘Was it one or none? Or five? If it was five then is that enough to change outcome? Yes. Qatar won 14-8. The problem is we need to know and we don’t know.’

Champagne added that it is his belief that FIFA’s probe into corruption allegations is effectively ongoing.

‘It is an unfinished FIFA ethics investigation … the request [to the Swiss Attorney General] is about five officials of FIFA.’