By Andrew Warshaw
November 2 – The head of Asian football has condemned the Sunday Times’ undercover investigation into alleged World Cup corruption as unethical.
Mohamed Bin Hammam (pictured), the Qatari president of the Asian confederation and one of the 24-man FIFA executive committee who will vote on the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts, has spoken out about the newspaper’s claims.
Repeating FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s accusation of entrapment, Bin Hammam said on his personal website: “Forging identity, fabricating evidence and setting traps are unethical behaviours in my point of view.”
Two FIFA executive committee members, Nigeria’s Amos Adamu and Tahiti’s Reynald Temarii, have been suspended pending a FIFA ethics committee hearing on November 17 after allegations that they asked for money for projects in return for World Cup votes.
The ethics committee are also investigating separate allegations that Qatar’s 2022 bid, heavily backed by bin Hammam, has colluded with the Spain/Portugal 2018 bid, with as many as seven FIFA votes allegedly at stake.
“How can we serve justice and look for fairness by not acting just and fair?” asked bin Hammam.
“How will we clean dirty laundry by using dirty water.”
FIFA agreed last week not to switch the 2022 vote to next year and to preserve the status quo by having both ballots on December 2.
Bin Hammam told the recent Leaders in Football conference in London that he personally was not in favour of the original decision to have a double World Cup ballot on the same day – and repeated this stance on his website.
“We all underestimated the passion for the game around the world – we miscalculated how much football has influence over the feelings of people.
“By admitting that mistake, FIFA executive committee members realised how much it is impossible to demand from their member associations not to talk to each other about their bid.
“President Blatter said in the [FIFA executive committee] meeting, ‘out of the nine bidding nations, eight of them have representatives in the FIFA ex co and all of them are friends. How can I ask them not to talk or discuss issues about the World Cup bid?’
“Collusion will always have a chance to happen as far as two bids will be decided together, but we all pray that no corrupted collusion will find its way to the bids.”
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