FIFA president Sepp Blatter gestures as he attends a news conference after a meeting of the FIFA executive committee in Zurich September 26, 2014.ARND WIEGMANN/Reuters
A corruption probe into the bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups will stay secret, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said Friday, rejecting a request from the chief investigator to make his report public.
Blatter said FIFA's ethics rules state that all such investigations should be confidential, and that no member of his executive committee asked for the report to be published at its meeting on Friday. He also chided ethics prosecutor Michael Garcia for issuing a press release to request that his investigation be published, rather than contacting Blatter personally.
"The FIFA president or secretary general have not had any demands or requests from Mr. Garcia to speak with us," Blatter said at a news conference. "The only contact that we have had ... was his press releases."
Garcia issued a statement on Wednesday calling for FIFA's ruling board to allow "appropriate publication" of his work. FIFA's ethics code only allows summaries of the actual verdict to be released.
Garcia, a former U.S. Attorney, has given FIFA's ethics judge Joachim Eckert first-draft reports totalling 430 pages from his team investigating alleged unethical behaviour by senior FIFA officials during the bidding campaigns won by Russia and Qatar.
Several FIFA board members who joined since the December 2010 votes have publicly backed Garcia's push to relax secrecy, with some seeking full disclosure.
"Most of the requests coming for the publication of this report were from people (that) were not there on the second of December when the decision was taken," Blatter said. "Today there was not any longer any requests from any of these members in the FIFA to publish this report."
Garcia's initial reports recommend further action against some voters, according to a FIFA statement released Sept. 5. At a FIFA-hosted conference last week, Garcia talked of building public confidence by announcing detailed charges.
Eckert has set an early-November deadline to finish reading the initial reports, then Garcia can request opening formal cases.
Final verdicts are expected around April next year. Eckert has suggested he will limit sanctions to individuals, and leave Blatter's board to decide whether to take action against Russia or Qatar.