World Cup 2022: Qatar fights “baseless allegations”
The 2022 World Cup organizers in Qatar strongly defended the voting process to win the hosting of the championship, against what they considered “unnecessary allegations.”
The Qatar 2022 Committee said in a statement that the reports that talked about suspicions are related to voting to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup championships are “a blatant attempt to touch the current independent investigations.”
The FIFA Ethics Committee, led by lawyer Michael Garcia, is looking into the process of giving bids for the 2018 and 2022. Its recommendations are scheduled to be issued next month. The jurisdiction of Garcia includes the research in allegations that a football official in Qatar, Mohammed bin Hammam, paid the sums of three million pounds to football officials in exchange for their support for the Qatar file, according to allegations that came in the investigations conducted by the British newspaper “Sunday Times”.
The Qatari team to host the tournament said in a statement, that he “has nothing to hide” and that he “cooperated with a complete and transparent investigation.”
The statement revealed that “realizing that we were not a major player in the world of football, we learned that we had to work more hard than anyone else to try to succeed in voting.
He added: “But on every side of the tender to host the FIFA World Cup 2018 and 2022, we are strictly restricting us with the rules and regulations of FIFA.” However, the organizing committee statement says that the recent media reports are “full of winking” and that Bin Hammam was neither responsible nor an informal member of the tender team.
While the team did not deny its “relationship” with Bin Hammam, but he said that he often “we used the Qatari citizens with influential.”
The Sunday Times newspaper responded to the statement by saying that it was “pleased with their recognition of the relationship with Bin Hammam”, and that it has more “to reveal” the Qatar file.
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