![]() ![]() Theirs is a power without responsibility. Thanks to its curious immunity from the law in Switzerland, where it is headquartered, and by creating mini-states with exemption from local courts within the countries it selects - however it selects them - to host the World Cup, FIFA is untouchable. While its attempts at polishing up its murky reputation are ham-fisted, no real incentive exists to do better. It brought no transparency, redeemed no reputations and offered no vindication to the many accusations of corruption.Īt length, we are left with just one conclusion: FIFA is addicted to its own impunity and will not relinquish it for the sake of transparency. This process, while nobly announced with the promise of real investigation, potential punitive sanctions, and reform, was a farce. This, then, was all a terrible and distracting waste of time. Since the adjudicators will presumably be the same, a second round of conclusions will surely not differ from the initial ones. This is a perversely circular course of justice. ![]() Garcia can and will appeal, but only to FIFA's Ethics Committee. "Today's decision by the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions detailed in the investigatory chamber's report," he claimed. Garcia immediately said that his report had been spun and that many consequential findings and conclusions were left out of Eckert's report. ![]() "The assessment of the 2018/2022 World Cups bidding process," the report continued, "is therefore closed for the FIFA Ethics Committee." But, wrote Eckert of the irregularities in most all the bids, "the effects of these occurrences on the bidding process as a whole were far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it." And the English press's dogged pursuit of FIFA corruption has made the country non grata to the world's governing body. There seem to be simple explanations: Bin Hammam was already banned for life for allegedly trying to buy support for his campaign against Blatter although his apparent unofficial involvement in the Qatari bid played no consequential role, according to Eckert. The only real accusations were leveled at Blatter's already-ostracized rival Mohamed Bin Hammam and the English bid for 2018, which is widely believe to have been clean. There had been some irregularities - and some oddities, like destroyed Russian laptops - although specifics and suspects were largely scarce. On the 40th page of his missive, which was short on detail and long on waffle, Eckert finally cut to the chase. If that sounded incestuous and like a conflict of interest, even though Garcia was an independent outsider, that's only because it was. He would tell us what he thought of the findings of the Investigative Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee. But Blatter said it won't be published, and so it probably won't.Īs such, all that would come out was the summary of the findings prepared by Hans-Joachim Eckert, chairman of the so-called Adjudicatory Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee. Several ExCo members had, in fact, and said so publicly. FIFA president Sepp Blatter, the Grand Poobah of the world's most opaque billion-dollar organization, said nobody on the Executive Committee had advocated for the report's public release. For 18 months he talked to dozens of people involved with the bidding countries and assembled thousands of pages of documents, before turning in his findings. district attorney Michael Garcia, a man of seemingly sound mind and repute, was appointed to investigate after the cries of corruption grew deafening. Both idioms seem relevant in the hubbub surrounding Thursday's news that FIFA found nothing sufficiently incriminating in the much-ballyhooed investigation into the 20 World Cup bidding process that would merit revisiting the allocations of the tournament to Russia and Qatar. They also say that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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