FIFA to review report on WC corruption

GENEVA (AP) ― FIFA will further review the 2018 and 2022 World Cup corruption investigation, putting the status of hosts Russia and Qatar back in question.

The head of FIFA’s auditing committee will examine the full 430-page confidential report by American prosecutor Michael Garcia into impropriety during the bid process, reviving a probe which seemed closed one week ago.

Domenico Scala, a Swiss businessman who serves as the soccer body’s audit panel chairman, will then decide whether to turn over any evidence to FIFA’s executive committee.

The decision to hand over the documents to Scala came a week after FIFA ethics judge Joachim Eckert ruled that the case against Russia and Qatar was closed.

Within hours of the German judge’s decision being published, Garcia appealed to FIFA, objecting to “numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations” of his work.

That led to a meeting in Zurich on Thursday between Eckert and Garcia, whose appeal appears to still be active.

The pair “agreed that it is of major importance that the FIFA Executive Committee has the information necessary to evaluate which steps are required based on the work done by the FIFA Ethics Committee,” they said in the statement.

“The chairmen also offered to answer any questions the chairman of the Audit and Compliance Committee and the Executive Committee might have.”

The FIFA executive committee will next meet Dec. 18-19 in Marrakech, Morocco, with 12 of its 25 elected members having voted in the scandal-plagued December 2010 hosting elections.