Minimal movement in FIFA corruption quagmire

Michael Garcia and Hans-Joachim Eckert (pictured) met on Thursday in Zurich to try to iron out their differences over FIFA's internal investigation into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process. When Eckert released a 42-page summary of Garcia's original 420-page investigation last week, Garcia immediately complained that the summary was based on "materially incomplete and erroneous" interpretations of his original findings.

FIFA announced in a statement afterwards, signed by both Garcia and Eckert, that the German judge and the former US federal prosecutor had agreed to bring in another pair of eyes - and possibly more besides.

"The chairman of the adjudicatory chamber [Eckert] and the chairman of the investigatory chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee [Garcia] met today to discuss the recent developments," said the FIFA statement. "Both chairmen 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."

Scala to read the full report

To this end, FIFA said, the pair agreed that Domenico Scala, the Swiss-Italian chairman of the FIFA Audit and Compliance Committee, "will reveive full copies of all reports of the investigatory chamber...to determine how much of that information should be made available to the FIFA Executive Committee."

According to FIFA, both Eckert and Garcia also agreed "to answer any questions [Scala] might have."

Prior to Scala, only a handful of people had laid eyes on Garcia's original investigation into the December 2010 votes awarding the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar.

When Eckert first presented his summary of Garcia's investigation he said that it cleared Russia and Qatar of charges of corruption, noting only "minor" cases, and declared the review process for the tournaments "closed." Garcia, who had also repeatedly complained about the levels of access he received when carrying out his investigations, swiftly announced his intention to appeal against this within FIFA.

Thursday's statement made no explicit mention of whether FIFA still considered the review process to be completed.

FIFA on Tuesday filed criminal complaints against unnamed individuals on the basis of the investigation, following days of criticism about a lack of transparency in the investigative process.

Several European football officials, perhaps most notably Reinhard Rauball, the president of the German Football League (DFL), had said that European soccer body UEFA might have to consider a split from FIFA unless Garcia's complete findings were made public.

msh/se (AP, Reuters)