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Omnishambles as Fifa’s corruption report is branded “erroneous” by lawyer Michael Garcia – the man who conducted the investigation
If you were spitting feathers this morning over the Fifa report which exonerated Qatar and Russia but put England in the spotlight, you weren't the only one.
Lawyer Michael Garcia, who actually conducted the investigation, has issued a statement slamming the report summary published this morning.
He claimed the report, written by Fifa ethics judge Joachim Eckhert, “contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations”.
Garcia, who has been fighting to have his report published in full, is now planning to appeal Fifa's ruling.
Sports Illustrated claims that among those elements not included in this morning's release is direct criticism of Sepp Blatter “for his failures of leadership during the bid process for World Cups 2018 and 20122” as well as “several individual members of the Fifa execuive committee” who took part in the 2010 vote, some of whom are still on the committee.
In the report published this morning, only disgraced former members Jack Warner and Mohammed Bin Hammam are named.
So far, Eckhert has declined to comment.
In the meantime the FA has responded to the accusations levelled at the English league this morning, saying it does "not accept any criticism regarding the integrity of England’s bid or any of the individuals involved".
We conducted a transparent bid and, as the report demonstrates with its reference to the England bid team’s ‘full and valuable cooperation’, willingly complied with the investigation. We maintain that transparency and cooperation around this entire process from all involved is crucial to its credibility.We also note that after a lengthy investigatory process and assessment, the report has concluded that the ‘potentially problematic facts and circumstances identified by the report regarding the England 2018 bid were, all in all, not suited to compromise the integrity of the FIFA World Cup 2018/22 bidding process as a whole’.
Simon Johnson, chief operating officer of the failed England bid, has gone further.
''Even before Mr Garcia's statement I was questioning how anybody could have confidence in a report which exonerated Qatar and diverted all the attention on England,” he is reported to have said.
Qatar, remember, is under huge pressure for funding international terrorists and its appalling human rights record. We co-opoerated fully and, unlike Russia, we didn't need to destroy any computers to hide the evidence.But if the author of the report has no faith in what has been said today, that undermines it further.
If FIFA's own investigator does not accept the #FIFA Report, why should anybody else? A politically motivated whitewash.
— Simon Johnson (@sjrbsimon) November 13, 2014