The International Criminal Police Organisation has dismissed as baseless allegations by the British Sunday Times newspaper that it has called for investigation, led by FIFA’s chief investigator Michael Garcia, into the World Cup 2022 bids, affirming that the news is absolutely false and bare of truth.
The UK’s Sunday Times falsely said that Interpol has called for a criminal inquiry into the 2022 World Cup bids. No such call was ever made by Interpol.
Interpol has stated clearly on several occasions that it supports the FIFA inquiries, headed by Michael J Garcia, a former US prosecutor, and that it believes allegations of criminal corruption should be thoroughly investigated wherever they occur.
Interpol’s standpoint was once again underlined by its Secretary General Ronald K Noble during an interview with CNN’s Richard Quest on Friday, June 13, when Noble also emphasised that Garcia is an experienced, thorough and expert investigator and that his findings and recommendations should be accepted and implemented by FIFA.
Garcia has already seen most of the evidence published by a British newspaper alleging that Mohamed bin Hammam corruptly bought influence for Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid.
“The vast majority of that material has been available to us for some time,” Garcia told FIFA’s congress of 209 member countries last Wednesday.
In a statement issued earlier Sunday, the bid committee said bin Hammam had no association with them while denying any suggestion of wrong-doing. The committee said it was co-operating with the ongoing investigation led by
Garcia.
“The Qatar 2022 Bid Committee always upheld the highest standard of ethics and integrity in its successful bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup,” the statement said.
The statement further said: “In regard to the latest allegations from The Sunday Times, we say again that Mohamed bin Hammam played no official or unofficial role in Qatar’s 2022 Bid Committee. As was the case with every other member of FIFA’s Executive Committee, our bid team had to convince Mr. Bin Hammam of the merits of our bid.”
“We are co-operating fully with Mr. Garcia’s on-going investigation and remain totally confident that any objective enquiry will conclude we won the bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup fairly,” said the statement.
“Following today’s newspaper articles, we vehemently deny all allegations of wrong-doing. We will take whatever steps are necessary to defend the integrity of Qatar’s bid and our lawyers are looking in to this matter. The right to host the tournament was won because it was the best bid and because it is time for the Middle East to host its first FIFA World Cup,” it concluded.
In a report filling the first 11 pages of the newspaper, The Sunday Times claimed it had obtained millions of documents which it says show former FIFA executive committee member Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar made payments totalling around $5mn to football officials in return for votes for Qatar.
Source : Gulftimes
