FIFA publishes Garcia report
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, June 28, 2017
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The global soccer body FIFA said yesterday it had decided to publish the so-called Garcia report into the decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively.
FIFA placed a link to the report on its website and said its decision was made after the report, compiled by its former chief ethics investigator Michael Garcia in 2014, was "illegally leaked" to a German newspaper.
"For the sake of transparency, FIFA welcomes the news that this report has now been finally published," it added.
The report into suspected corruption in the 2018-2022 World Cup bidding contests — involving 11 nations — has been the mystery ever since American Garcia delivered it more than 2-1/2 years ago.
A leaked copy of the 430-page document kept confidential by FIFA and Switzerland's attorney general finally surfaced, with Germany's biggest-selling daily Bild publishing extracts in its editions, starting yesterday.
Garcia's report was once expected to be explosive and became a holy grail for FIFA critics who thought the votes could be re-run.
Many believe bid leaders in Russia and Qatar must have engaged in wrongdoing to earn the votes of a FIFA executive committee lineup in 2010 that has since been widely discredited.
Most of those who took part in the 2010 vote have since been banned for unethical conduct, indicted on corruption charges by the US Department of Justice, or remain under scrutiny by Swiss federal prosecutors who have 25 ongoing investigations involving more than 170 bank transactions suspected as money laundering.
Still, don't expect the long-held suspicions to be proven this week. "The (Garcia) report does not provide proof that the World Cup was bought in 2018 or 2022," Bild journalist Peter Rossberg, who obtained the leaked copy, wrote in a Facebook post providing context to his initial story.
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