There are new allegations of major corruption at the heart of the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. The allegations come as The Sunday Times reports it has received evidence proving former FIFA executive committee member Mohamed Bin Hammam paid large sums of money to football officials for votes to award the competition to Qatar.
The Times states that the Qatari vice-president “used secret slush funds to make dozens of payments totalling more than $5m to senior football officials to create a groundswell of support for Qatar’s plan to take world football by storm.”
The trove of files – running at several million documents – show that Bin Hammam offered large payments to football officials in exchange for their support of the Qatar bid. Bin Hammam focused particularly on African voters, bringing them on lavish junkets and giving them expensive gifts, while also making personal payments to officials. The focus on African officials was at the centre of the strategy as the members of CAF wielded significant influence over the four votes available from the continent’s FIFA Executive Committee representatives.
One of the documents included was an email from John Muinjo, president of the Namibian FA, to Bin Hammam pledging his federation’s support, saying the Namibian FA “will always be behind you in its unequivocal support at all times” before adding “we would want to be assisted with a once off financial assistance to the tune of $50,000” for the construction of football pitches. Emails between several other influential members of African FAs are also revealed, with promises of support for Qatar’s bid coming shortly after the officials had been lavished with gifts on expensive junkets.
FIFA vice-president Jim Boyce has said he would back a new vote on the location of the 2022 World Cup if recent allegations of large scale corruption in relation to the awarding of the tournament to Qatar prove to be true.
Boyce told BBC Radio 5: “As a member currently of the FIFA executive committee, we feel that any evidence whatsoever that people involved were bribed to do a certain vote, all that evidence should go to Michael Garcia, whom FIFA have given full authority to, and let’s await the report that comes back from Garcia.
“If Garcia’s report comes up and his recommendations are that wrongdoing happened for that vote for the 2022 World Cup, I certainly as a member of the executive co would have absolutely no problem whatsoever if the recommendation was for a re-vote.
“If Garcia comes up with concrete evidence and concrete evidence is given to the executive committee and to FIFA then it has to be looked at very seriously at that time, there’s no doubt about that.”
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