3. There Are Allegations Of Corruption In Qatar's Successful Bid
For years FIFA has been dogged by accusations of corruption. Joao Havelange, FIFA president from the 1970s to the 1990s, has since been shown to have accepted millions of dollars of kickbacks from the organisation's financial partners. Since Havelange was succeeded by his former assistant Sepp Blatter in 1998, many of FIFA's executive committee have resigned under a cloud of financial misdealings. One of those executives, Chuck Blazer, was recently banned from all football related activities pending investigation into accusations that he embezzled up to $21 million. Blazer had previously made allegations against Qatari FIFA executive Mohammed Bin Hammam and then FIFA Vice President Jack Warner of trying to buy votes as part of Bin Hammam's campaign to replace Blatter as President. Bin Hammam withdrew from his campaign in 2011 amidst bribery accusations for which he was later cleared. However, in December he was suspended from all football for life due to "conflicts of interest" while in charge of the Asian Football Confederation. Warner resigned in 2011 after accusations of accepting bribes stretching across multiple World Cups. Given that all of these men were involved in the Executive Committee that awarded Qatar the 2022 World Cup, doubts have naturally been raised over the legality of that process as well. Blatter, who has made efforts to clean up corruption within the organisation over the last few years, has recently admitted that: "direct political influence" was involved in Qatar's successful bid. In the light of that, Michael Garcia, investigator for FIFA's ethics committee, has been asked to report on the bidding process for both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Qatar devoted a huge amount of money and influence to getting the World Cup, but plenty of countries in the past have used lobbying techniques. Until all the findings are made public there is no way of knowing if they broke any campaign rules, but this is yet another thing that casts a shadow over FIFA's operations.