The British government has asked FIFA president Sepp Blatter to publicly reveal the details of Michael Garcia’s report, that led to the controversy surrounding the 2018 and 2022 Fifa World Cup bidding process.
According to The Guardian’s Owen Gibson, the cultural secretary Sajid Javid has penned a letter to Blatter asking him to publish the report in full, or else risk the damage to the game’s reputation.
Jarvis has mentioned in his letter that the way Football governing body has handled the saga, calls into question of Fifa’s “independence and transparency”.
“Without the disclosure of the full report, FIFA risks not just further damage to its own credibility, but now significant damage to the reputation of football as a whole,” wrote Jarvis.
Garcia’s report contained a detailed 200,000 pages of evidence that was sent to Fifa in September had put Qatar’s hosting rights into question.
”The report sets forth detailed factual findings; reaches conclusions concerning further action with respect to certain individuals; identifies issues to be referred to other FIFA committees; and makes recommendations for future bidding processes,” FIFA said in a statement back in September.
Fifa has made the full 430 page Garcia report available to Domenico Scala, chair of its audit committee, but question marks still remain over its transparency.
This intervention of British government, endorsed by none other than Prime Minister David Cameron himself, will once again be shrugged off in Zurich as Fifa committee believe England share a strong antagonism towards the governing body that stems out from their 2018 bidding farce.
Jarvis added: “I understand there are challenges around confidentiality within the report, but this is a challenge faced by many public bodies in conducting their work in an open and transparent way. It should not be beyond Fifa, working with those who contributed with an expectation of confidentiality, to publish the full report in a format that does not contravene assurances of confidentiality where they cannot be waived.”
Fifa have received a strong blow yesterday after major sponsor Sony withdrew from renewing its top tier sponsorship deal at the end of the year.
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