Countries should quit FIFA if report not made public: British MP

A British MP has called on football’s world governing body FIFA to make public a secret report into allegations of corruption during the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups amid fears it would be “buried”.

Damian Collins said England’s Serious Fraud Office should demand a copy of the report and the English Football Association and other football countries should be prepared to cancel their FIFA membership if the body fails to reveal its findings, The Telegraph reported.

The report was completed earlier this month but the chairman of FIFA's ethics committee’s adjudicatory chamber, Hans Joachim-Eckert, has said only he and his deputy will ever see it, raising concerns the truth behind allegations will never be known.

The investigation centres on numerous allegations of corruption during the 2010 bids that saw Russia and Qatar awarded the tournaments for 2018 and 2022, respectively.

Qatari Mohamed Bin Hammam was accused of paying millions of dollars to football officials around the world in the run up to the vote.

Concerns also have been raised about playing in the Gulf state, which has never competed in a World Cup, during summer, when temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius.

FIFA’s investigator and the report’s author, Michael Garcia, has called for the report to be published.

British Tory MP Damian Collins, a former member of the Commons culture media and sport committee, which separately investigated the bidding process, said burying the report would be a “complete sham” and was “totally unacceptable”.

He said the Serious Fraud Office should be entitled to see the report to examine whether there was evidence of wrongdoing within its jurisdiction.

“I intend to write to the Attorney General to ask whether he could request a copy of the report,” Collins was quoted as saying by The Telegraph. “The report covers the whole of the World Cup bidding process so we should be able to see it to determine whether it shows any wrongdoing that falls within the jurisdiction of the Serious Fraud Office.’

He also called on FIFA member countries to be willing to leave the organisation if it refused to be transparent.

“We should be prepared to do that and other countries should be prepared to do that,” he said.

“At the end of the day, all FIFA cares about is money. If FIFA is prepared to bury this report then it shows they will never be serious about reform and cleaning up the game.”

Simon Johnson, who was England 2018's chief operating officer and gave evidence to the FIFA investigation, said: “I find it astonishing they are not prepared to publish any part of this report or a summary.

“Whatever conclusions are made, the FIFA executive will be forever shrouded in mystery and suspicion.

“If they are not going to be free, open and transparent how can anyone trust the conclusions? It will lead people to suspect that anything they come out with is a whitewash.”