OFFICIAL’S DAUGHTER

world football’s governing body.

According to Bild, in the report Garcia reveals that “a former executive committee member congratulated members of the Qatari federation and thanked them by mail for a transfer of several hundred thousand euros” just after Qatar was awarded the 2022 tournament.

“Two million dollars from an unknown source arrived in the savings account of the 10-yearold daughter of a Fifa member,” add Bild.

The newspaper adds that “three executive members of Fifa with the right to vote went to a party in Rio de Janeiro in a private jet belonging to the Qatari federation before the vote to decide who would host the competition.”

The Aspire Academy in Qatar, one of the biggest sports academies in the world, was also “implicated in a decisive manner in the manipulation of Fifa members who had the right to vote,” the paper adds.

Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup in late 2010 and the result of the vote has been the source of enormous controversy ever since.

Following Garcia’s investigation, the adjudicatory chamber of Fifa’s ethics committee noted that there had been suspicious behaviour during the bidding process but not enough to call into question the decision to give Qatar the 2022 finals or Russia the 2018 tournament.

Garcia resigned as head of Fifa’s investigatory body in December 2014 in protest at what he described as Fifa’s “incomplete and erroneous” summary of his report. AFP