£17.17 BILLION!

What Qatar paid to host the 2022 World Cup f inals

AMID renewed calls for FIFA to overturn the controversial decision to hand the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, new research by the Mail on

Sunday has shown just how much the oil-rich Middle East state spent on deals — including legitimate trade deals — in the course of lobbying in the run-up to the 2010 vote.

Qatar won the final round of voting 14-8 against the USA in the executive committee ballot. The MoS analysis suggests that Qatar spent an astonishing £17.2 billion directly and indirectly on the way to victory.

Much of this outlay was on goods and services for Qatar — including aerospace orders, a football club, sponsorship agreements, land and general exposure. The details are in the accompanying panel.

There were also millions of pounds of cash payments made to a huge range of football officials from secret slush funds controlled by Qatar’s executive committee member Mohammed bin Hammam.

These payments and swathes of new detail about how Bin Hammam won the right for Qatar to host the event are detailed in a book published last week, The Ugly Game, by investigative journalists Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert.

Former FIFA head of security Chris Eaton has called for any new evidence to be considered by FIFA — even though he now works for Qatar. And a high-level group of European politicians — the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe — has approved a resolution calling on FIFA to re-run the ‘illegal’ bidding process.

Qatar is the world’s richest country in per capita income and even the £17.2bn is minor compared to the $200bn (£132bn) budgeted for World Cup facilities and supporting infrastructure.