Qatar 2022 attacks ‘malicious’: organiser

Listen to us, says Al-Khater

DOHA, Dec 5, (AFP): Qatar’s much-criticised 2022 World Cup has been the victim of “malicious and unwarranted attacks”, a senior tournament official in the Gulf said on Monday.

Nasser Al-Khater, assistant secretary general of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, the body overseeing the organisation of the tournament in Qatar, also claimed that many of the country’s critics had not “set foot in the country”.

“We’ve responded to our critics for a very long time to the detriment of the local people and local media,” he told a Soccerex Asia forum meeting in Doha.

“We were under a lot of criticism we were under, I would say, malicious and

whether Blatter was guilty of unethically offering a cash gift and conflict of interest with Platini, who was a FIFA vice president in 2011.

Blatter and Platini both said the $2 million was uncontracted salary based on a verbal agreement more than a decade earlier. From 1999 to 2002, the former France great was the newly elected Blatter’s presidential adviser.

However, their explanation of a salary deal

unwarranted attacks.”

Since being controversially chosen to host football’s biggest event almost exactly six years ago, Qatar has received a barrage of international criticism.

These have mostly focused on corruption allegations to secure the tournament in the first place and its poor human rights record, in relation to the almost two million migrant workers in the Gulf state.

Qatar is the subject of an ongoing Swiss Attorney General investigation into corruption claims over the bidding process for the 2022 tournament, allegations always denied in Doha. It was also accused earlier this year by Amnesty International of using “forced labour” at one World Cup site.

was doubted by FIFA ethics judges, and by the three-member CAS panel on Monday.

“The payment amounted to an undue gift as it had no contractual basis,” CAS said in a statement.

The FIFA ethics committee investigated after the payment emerged in September 2015 during a wider Swiss federal probe of alleged corruption linked to FIFA.

Qatar has tried to counter such claims by saying it is in the process of bringing in significant labour reforms.

Later this month, the gas-rich state is expected to announce the end of its controversial “kafala” laws, which place restrictions on workers’ ability to change jobs and travel.

In addition, last month the Supreme Committee announced that it would allow international trade union inspections of tournament stadium sites from next year.

Khater added that he thought critics were being silenced.

“I think it’s time critics started to listen to us. I think they are coming round to the fact that Qatar is not a bad idea,” he said.

Blatter and Platini — whose FIFA presidential bid was stalled, then ended, by the case — were banned from soccer duty for eight years last December. The FIFA appeal committee cut two years from both men’s bans as “appropriate recognition” for their long service.

After a separate CAS appeal hearing, Platini’s ban was reduced in May to four years, ensuring he lost the UEFA presidency.