Fifa corruption: Swiss authorities set to reveal governing body's records seized in police raids
Documents will reveal details of the investigation into money-laundering in the bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups
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Your support makes all the difference.Switzerland’s attorney general will on Wednesday reveal details of the investigation into money-laundering in the bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups for the first time since the sensational dawn arrests in Zurich three weeks ago.
So far, all that has been confirmed by the office of Michael Lauber is that 10 serving Fifa executive committee members have been questioned in “criminal proceedings” over the 2010 votes won by Russia and Qatar, in a statement published after several Fifa top executives were arrested at the Baur au Lac Hotel two days before Fifa’s Congress.
Lauber will detail the scope of the investigation, which is understood to be based on Fifa’s own investigation by the American lawyer Michael Garcia, and expand on what data and documents have since been taken from Fifa’s Zurich headquarters in two separate visits by investigators in the last three weeks.
The attorney general’s office has already confirmed it is investigating a 2010 match played in Qatar between Brazil and Argentina, which may have been used as a vehicle through which to make payments in the form of marketing and media rights to South American officials such as Brazil’s Ricardo Teixeira and the now deceased Argentina Football Association chief Julio Grondona, in return for voting for Qatar as 2022 World Cup hosts.
Teixeira, who until 2012 was head of Brazil’s 2014 World Cup organising committee but stood down in the wake of serious corruption allegations involving the marketing company ISL, is also facing a criminal investigation in Brazil. Millions of euros are alleged to have been found in a Monaco bank account in Teixeira’s name, which have been paid by Qatari construction companies who have benefited from the 2022 decision.
Fifa has also accused the Nobel Peace Centre, the body that awards the Nobel Peace Prize, of “not upholding the spirit of fair play”, after it announced it would end its partnership with Fifa in its “Handshake for Peace” initiative.
This was arguably the outgoing president Sepp Blatter’s favourite initiative, which compelled competing teams to shake hands before and after matches to “promote peace and fair play”, and for which, several of his aides have said, he believed would win him the Nobel Peace Prize.
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