FIFA May Regret a Qatar World Cup After All
In 2012, as allegations of wrongdoing in the recent World Cup bid process mounted, FIFA appointed Michael J. Garcia, the former U.S. attorney for New York’s southern district, as the chief investigator for its ethics committee and tasked him with looking into the bid process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Though Garcia submitted a three-hundred-and-fifty-page-long report last fall, the chair of the judicial branch of the ethics committee, Hans-Joachim Eckert, refused to make it public, instead issuing a forty-two-page summary which Garcia called “incomplete and erroneous.” In December, Garcia made an appeal to have the report released in full, but his attempt failed and he resigned in protest.