FIFA chief investigator Michael Garcia has decided not to consider the millions of documents obtained by the Sunday Times that allegedly tie the Qatar 2022 bidding committee to a fresh waveof bribery allegations surrounding the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to the Middle Eastern country. Garcia has spent more than a year and $10 million traveling the world interviewing FIFA officialsas well as representatives from all nine bidding nations for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, looking for instances of bribery or corruption. He will present his findings just after the World Cup toFIFA president Sepp Blatter, who will then determine whether or not there needs to be a re-vote.
According to the Guardian report, Garcia technically ends his investigatoryodyssey on June 9, and the fact that he will not analyze the evidence from the Sunday Times database, which was published over the weekend, suggests that he may already have made up his mind.
David Cameron, the UK prime minister who was one of three main representatives spearheading England’s failed bid to host the 2018 World Cup alongside Prince William and formerinternational David Beckham, said Garcia’s inquiry should be allowed to take its course. “There is an inquiry under way, quite rightly, into what happened in terms of the World Cup bid for2022. We should let that inquiry take place rather than prejudge it,” he said. “My memories of that bidding process are not happy memories in terms of the way the whole thing was arranged andthe role of FIFA.”