Qatar Football Association denies bribery allegation
The Qatar Football Association (QFA) has dismissed media reports of bribery by some of its officials in the run up to the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid.
The QFA in a statement copied to the GNA Sports in Accra has described as baseless publications made by UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee website of evidence provided by the Sunday Times, which suggests that some FIFA officials were offered bribes to vote for Qatar, the host country.
The reports said Issa Hayatou, President of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and Jacques Anouma, President of the Ivorian Football Federation; both members of the FIFA Executive Committee were offered 1,500,000 US Dollars to vote for the ‘tiny’ Arabian country.
“We categorically deny these allegations. As The Sunday Times itself states, these accusations “were and remain unproven”. They will remain unproven, because they are false,” the statement said.
The statement explained that the newspaper claimed that the accounts of the persons involved were not a reliable basis to publish the allegations, meaning that the evidences are wholly unreliable.
The GFA said they had informed FIFA and offered support for any investigations into the matter before the Sunday Times published their expose last year.
“FIFA’s Ethics Committee investigated certain allegations, and entirely exonerated the Qatar 2022 bid. We have nothing to hide and are prepared to support and cooperate with any further investigations and will be happy to counter any allegations from whistleblowers with real evidence.
“The Qatar 2022 bid team ran an historic campaign that changed football.
Bidding, like football, is a rough sport. Happily, our promise of bringing football to new lands and expanding its legacies across the developing world compelled FIFA to our side.”
The statement added that they had confidence in the strength of their bid and applied the highest ethical rules from the beginning of the process.
“Many commentators keep pointing to the challenges Qatar 2022 faces. Like any organiser of a major international sporting event, we indeed face many challenges, but we have managed as a nation to meet our challenges and overcome all of them and we will do so in the future.
“We will continue our journey with the utmost integrity as we did from the beginning and we will succeed. We will ensure that the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022 is a stunning success,” the statement concluded.
Qatar was elected over Korea, USA and Japan for the hosting rights of the 2022 World Cup last December at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.
It will be the first time the Mundial will be staged in the Middle East.
Source: GNA