veröffentlicht am Sonntag, 21.09.2014

Sunday Times

Die Sunday Times hat heute einen grossten Artikel zum famosen "Garcia-Report" der Fifa-Ethikkommission veröffentlicht. Dabei wird (zurecht) kritisiert, dass es falsch sei, wenn der Bericht offenbar für immer und ewig unter Verschluss bleiben und nur vier Personen zugänglich gemacht werden soll. Transparenz sieht anders aus!

Meine Aussage (siehe unten) wurde im Bericht extrem verkürzt: Im Gegensatz zum Geschriebenen bin ich der Meinung, dass die Fifa in Sachen "Aufräumen bei den Korruptionsflällen" durchaus gehandelt hat. Dies im Gegensatz, zum Beispiel, zum IOC und zur UEFA. Sowohl der aktuelle "Uhrenskandal" als auch die Intransparenz in Sachen "Garcia-Report" sind jedoch klare Rückschläge:

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/fifa/article1462092.ece

Fury at Fifa’s inquiry cover-up

FIFA was accused of a cover-up yesterday after its top ethics judge revealed that the long-awaited report into alleged corruption in the bidding to stage the 2018 and 2022 World Cups would never be published.

Hans Joachim-Eckert, who chairs the adjudicatory chamber of Fifa’s ethics committee, said he would personally ensure that the 350-page report and 200,000 pages of evidence delivered to him this month by its investigator, Michael Garcia, remained under lock and key for ever.

The Munich judge told The Sunday Times that he and his deputy would be the only people to read the report and said that Fifa’s rules prohibited him from making its contents public to anyone, including the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, and all its 27 executive members.

Eckert’s vow of secrecy will dash hopes that the report, which cost at least £6m to produce, will provide a decisive answer to allegations of corruption in the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid, including evidence of bribery contained in millions of documents leaked to this newspaper.

His stance provoked an outcry this weekend from campaigners seeking to clean up Fifa and infuriated Garcia, who said the lack of transparency would undermine public trust in his investigation.

John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, said: “I’m absolutely horrified. The one thing we’ve always been told by Fifa is that there would be a proper investigation and we should wait for the Garcia report. But if the Garcia report is going to be buried so that we have no idea what the conclusions are, it will leave the reputation of Fifa in pieces. It confirms what we have long suspected, that all Fifa is interested in is burying this whole matter and sweeping the evidence under the carpet.”

Alexandra Wrage, an international bribery expert who resigned in frustration from Fifa’s independent governance panel last year, said the decision to “cloak the entire report in secrecy” would fuel public suspicions that the whole investigation had been a “hollow exercise to keep critics at bay”.

Lord Triesman, the former FA chairman who initially led the England bid to host the 2018 World Cup until his resignation seven months before the vote, said: “Fifa has a very long-standing culture of misbehaviour and complete secrecy — omerta is the word that comes to my mind — so in a way it’s not surprising that they won’t reveal the contents of the Garcia report. But the most clear test of whether Fifa ever attempts to reform is whether it conducts investigations in a transparent way, publishes the details of the findings and deals with the problems in an equally transparent way. Other than that, the culture will simply go on as it has done now for decades.”

Roland Büchel, a member of the Swiss parliament who has warned Fifa that it could lose its advantageous tax status as an association if it does not reform, said: “They have been talking now for three years about transparency and they are simply not doing it. They talk about ethics but don’t take any action.”

Fifa has consistently used the impending delivery of Garcia’s report to defend its refusal to respond to evidence published by The Sunday Times that Qatar’s top football official, Mohammed bin Hammam, paid millions of pounds in bribes to buy support for his country’s bid. The official Qatar World Cup bid has always denied that Bin Hammam was working on its behalf.