FIFA is under mounting pressure to rerun the bidding process for the 2022 World Cup after the Sunday Times produced documents that showed that former FIFA executive committee memberMohamed bin Hammam paid $5 million in cash and gifts to African officials in a bid to help secure Qatar’s bid for the tournament from Africa’s four members of the FIFA executivecommittee. The evidence has since been passed to FIFA’s ethics prosecutor Michael Garcia, who was hired to investigate this and other issues relating to corruption atsoccer’s world governing body. Following the news, which was revealed over the weekend, officials from England, Australia and Japan said that FIFA should rerun the voting process.
“IfFIFA is to emerge from the scandals, and this isn’t the only one — there are other issues — it has to produce a convincing and transparent answer to these allegations, particularly to these hostingdecisions,” former British attorney general Lord Goldsmith told the Guardian. “If these allegations are shown to be true, then the hosting decision for Qatar has to bererun … if it is proved that the decision to give Qatar the World Cup was procured by bribery and improper influence then that decision ought not to stand.”
YuichiroNakajima, head of Japan’s unsuccessful bid, said the allegations should be investigated by Garcia and backed calls for the bid process to be rerun. “All of this points to the need for a majorreform at how FIFA is governed,” Nakajima told Today.
Meanwhile, the Qatar 2022 bid committee said it had always upheld the highest standard of ethics and integrity in its successfulbid to host the tournament. It said: “In regard to the latest allegations from The Sunday Times, we say again that Mohamed bin Hammam played no official or unofficial role in Qatar’s 2022 bidcommittee. As was the case with every other member of FIFA’s executive committee, our bid team had to convince Mr. bin Hammam of the merits of our bid.” The group added that it is cooperating fullywith Garcia’s investigation.