FIFA’s major sponsors do not doubt the integrity of football’s governing body in the light of the allegations of corruption over the controversial Qatar bid to host the 2022 World Cup FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke told French radio Thursday.
Five of FIFA’s six major sponsors, who account for hundreds of millions of dollars of finance each year, have called for a thorough investigation of the allegations.
However, Valcke, who has occupied his present post since 2007, said they were not querying the honesty of the body itself just that they be transparent in their investigation which is being led by Michael Garcia, a former US federal prosecutor.
“They have only asked that FIFA shows that it has been totally transparent regarding the investigation,” the 53-year-old Frenchman told France Inter.
“FIFA could not have been more open than it is today.”
Valcke, who also said in the interview he believed embattled FIFA president Sepp Blatter would be re-elected to a new term next year despite European football chiefs calling for him to step down, said it was down to Garcia to raise the clouds of suspicion hanging over FIFA when he delivers his final report in mid-July.
“FIFA takes decisions sometimes which don’t always please everyone, FIFA will always be criticised to a certain degree,” he said.
“He (Garcia) has interviewed all the people directly or not directly implicated, it is for him to relate what happened.”
Blatter has been FIFA’s president since 1998. But his rule has never seen a controversy like the accusations that Qatar paid for votes when FIFA chose the Gulf country to host the 2022 World Cup.
Qatar has strongly denied involvement in wrongdoing. But allegations made in British newspaper The Sunday Times are expected to be raised at the FIFA congress.
Garcia, who said on Wednesday he had already had prior access to the ‘vast majority’ of documents that the Sunday Times had made public over the past two weeks, has completed his report but it will not be handed to a FIFA adjudicatory chamber until mid- July. Blatter has said no decisions will be taken until September or October.
The adjudicatory chamber has powers to hand out sanctions, open a disciplinary procedure or decide there is no case to answer.
Garcia said on Wednesday investigators had interviewed members of all the bidding teams for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and had reviewed tens of thousands of documents.
He added they had interviewed, or tried to interview, all members of FIFA’s executive committee at the time of the 2010 vote.
Media reports have said German legend Franz Beckenbauer, an executive committee member at the time, is facing sanctions for failing to cooperate with the investigation Qatar beat the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea to the 2022 tournament, despite a FIFA technical report which warned the searing temperatures during June and July in Qatar posed a health risk.
