Garcia appeal dismissed by FIFA
FIFA ethics investigator Michael Garcia has lost his appeal against the findings which cleared Qatar and Russia to host the 2022 and 2018 World Cups.
Garcia last month claimed a statement by ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert on his report into bidding for the World Cups had contained "numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions" and announced he would appeal.
That appeal has now been declared inadmissible by FIFA's appeals committee, who said Eckert's statement was not a legally-binding decision and therefore could not be appealed against.
FIFA's appeals committee has ruled Hans-Joachim Eckert's statement could not be appealed against
Eckert's statement said any rule breaches by the bidding countries were "of very limited scope'', adding: "In particular, the effects of these occurrences on the bidding process as a whole were far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it."
A FIFA statement said: "The FIFA appeal committee, chaired by Larry Mussenden, has concluded that the appeal lodged by the chairman of the investigatory chamber, Michael J. Garcia, against the statement of the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber of the independent ethics committee, Hans-Joachim Eckert, is not admissible.
"The said statement about the report on the inquiry into the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cup bidding process does not constitute a decision and as such is neither legally binding nor appealable."
FIFA's appeals committee added that Garcia's report had not cited "any rule violations of an accused person, nor does it contain any kind of recommendation to the adjudicatory chamber for sanctioning an accused person".
FIFA's executive committee will vote this week on whether Garcia's report - with names redacted - should be made public.
Meanwhile, complaints by two World Cup bid whistleblowers that their cover had been blown by Eckert's findings have also been rejected.
Phaedra Almajid, who worked for the Qatar 2022 bid team before losing her job in 2010, and Bonita Mersiades, who worked for Australia's 2022 bid, complained that promises of confidentiality had been breached because his findings contained more than enough information to make them easily identifiable.
Almajid issued a statement in response to the decision by FIFA's disciplinary committee rejecting her complaint, saying Eckert had breached her confidentiality.
She said: "I cooperated with Mr Garcia's investigation for over two and a half years under a clear, unqualified promise of confidentiality. He asked me for my confidentiality and repeatedly promised me mine.
"I kept my promise. Herr Eckert breached that confidentiality. I did not. The disciplinary committee's avoidance of this undisputable violation is emblematic of its culture of self-protection."
FIFA's disciplinary committee chairman Claudio Sulser rejected the complaint on the basis that the two whistleblowers " had gone public with their own media activities".
