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FA accused of damaging FIFA's integrity

A FIFA report says the Football Association often accommodated "inappropriate requests" from Jack Warner © Getty Images

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The Football Association has been accused of breaking FIFA rules and violating the governing body's integrity in its bid to host the 2018 World Cup, in a report that also cleared Qatar to host the 2022 edition.

The 42-page report by German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA's independent ethics committee, has ruled on Michael Garcia's investigation into the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments - and the findings have ended any possibility of a re-run of the voting process.

Qatar had faced numerous allegations of corruption, but the report turned much of its fire on England's conduct, saying it had "damaged the integrity of the ongoing bidding process".

It said the England 2018 bid team's attempts to secure the FIFA executive votes apparently controlled by disgraced ex-vice-president Jack Warner included securing a job for a family friend in Britain and "violated bidding rules".

Warner was said to have "showered" the England 2018 bid team with "inappropriate requests" which were "often accommodated".

"Relevant occurrences included Mr Warner pressing, in 2009 and again in 2010, England's bid team to help a person of interest to him find a part-time job in the UK," the document read.

"England 2018's top officials, in response, not only provided the individual concerned with employment opportunities, but also kept Mr Warner apprised of their efforts as they solicited his support for the bid."

The report said England 2018 had picked up the bill for a £35,000 gala dinner for Caribbean officials, also providing "substantial assistance" for a training camp for an under-20 Trinidad and Tobago team in 2009.

Warner asked for favours for his Trinidad football club Joe Public FC, and the investigators found that "the bid team often accommodated Mr Warner's wishes in apparent violation of bidding rules and the FIFA code of ethics".

"England's response to Mr Warner's - improper - demands, in at a minimum always seeking to satisfy them in some way, damaged the integrity of the ongoing bidding process," it said. "Yet such damage was again of rather limited extent."

The report also hit out at Lord Triesman, the England bid chairman, saying he did not co-operate with the Garcia investigation but had used his parliamentary privilege to make a number of allegations of corruption in the bidding process.

Triesman accused four FIFA executive committee members of requesting gifts in return for votes.

He resigned from his chairmanship in 2010, while chief executive Andy Anson was appointed as independent director of the British Olympic Association in 2011.

However, the two-year investigation found that any rule breaches by Qatar, Russia and England were of "limited scope" and "far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it."

Qatar had faced numerous allegations involving Qatari former FIFA executive committee member Mohamed Bin Hammam, who was banned for life by FIFA.

Bin Hammam was alleged to have organised payments for Warner and other officials, but Qatar World Cup officials had always insisted he was separate from the bid team.

But the FIFA investigators found Bin Hammam was "distant" from the Qatari bid committee and that payments made to Warner and some African officials were more connected with the challenge he had made to president Sepp Blatter in 2011.

It did, however, note "certain indications of potentially problematic conduct of specific individuals." Garcia's investigation examined the bidding processes of the nine nations competing to stage the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, with the vote on hosting taking place in 2010.

That vote saw Russia announced as 2018 hosts - England received only two votes - and Qatar awarded the 2022 event.

Russia was also criticised, with the 42-page document finding that its officials had made "only a limited amount of documents available for review" because it was found that computers used at the time had been scrapped.

The report also found Australia had made efforts to woo Warner and Oceania chief Reynald Temarii, with those attempts including the provision of funds for development projects.

It said "certain payments from the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) to CONCACAF which ... appear to have been co-mingled, at least in part, with personal funds of the then CONCACAF president [Warner] who at the time also was a FIFA executive committee member" had been identified.

The document condemned those behind the joint Spain-Portugal bid for the 2018 tournament, saying "the relevant federation was particularly un-cooperative in responding to the investigatory chamber's requests".

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