FIFA accused as Qatar rebuffs ‘false’ claims

Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee reports as executives from the international governing body of football are accused of “improper and unethical” behaviour.

Britain’s former Football Association chairman, Lord Triesman, says four FIFA executives sought bribes or other favours in return for backing England’s failed 2018 World Cup bid.

The man behind Qatar’s successful bid for 2022, Mike Lee, was also called to this inquiry where he had to answer an allegation from reporters at Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper that the Gulf state had paid officials from several African countries for their support.

Qatar’s football association later released a statement, saying the allegations “will remain unproven, because they are false.”

“The evidence from The Sunday Times states that it did not publish the allegations themselves since ‘none of the three people who made the allegations against us was ever likely to be willing to appear as a witness’,” the QFA statement read.

“In fact, the newspaper could easily have published the allegations had they thought that it could be shown that it was responsible and in the public interest to do so. In the event, they plainly concluded that the accounts of these people were not a reliable basis to publish these allegations. Indeed, these accounts are evidently wholly unreliable.”

The statement continued: “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.”