Former U.S. attorney Michael Garcia has played a major role in various types of prosecutions during his career: anti-terrorism, corruption; he's even become known to some of the more romantic among us as the "Sheriff of Wall Street."
Most recently, Garcia was tasked with investigating the controversial bidding race for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups that eventually went to Russia and Qatar, respectively - the resulting summary of which found no wrong-doing by Qatar or Russia, and allowed them to retain their duties as host countries, The Guardian reported.
That's not the conclusion that Garcia claims he came to after 18 months of investigation, according to a new report from The Guardian, leaving him "furious" after German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert closed the investigation on Thursday, ruling there was not enough evidence to justify reopening the process.
"Today's decision by the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions detailed in the investigatory chamber's report," said Garcia, who gathered evidence from the nine bidding nations and interviewed more than 75 witnesses.
Garcia also said that he would appeal to the FIFA ethics committee, of which there are two - an investigatory arm and an adjudicatory one, established after the Zurich-based governing body was accused of a myriad of corruption allegations around the time of the Dec. 2012 World Cup vote.
The issue has apparently split the FIFA executive committee, with some, including UEFA president, Michel Platini, British representative Jim Boyce and American representative Sunil Gulati, calling for the report to be published in full.
"In view of the fact Michael Garcia has now stated he is not happy with the findings and is to appeal, I await with interest to see what further disclosures will be made," Boyce said. "I have always said as much of the report as it is legally possible to publish should be made public."
FIFA responded with a statement alleging it had not been notified of the intention to appeal.
"We take note of reports mentioning a statement issued by Michael Garcia, chairman of the investigatory chamber of the Fifa ethics committee, following today's publication of the statement by the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber, Hans Joachim Eckert, relating to the report on the inquiry into the 2018-2022 Fifa World Cup bidding process as prepared by the investigatory chamber."
"For the time-being, Fifa has not been officially notified of this statement and is therefore not in a position to further comment on this matter at this stage. We will follow-up in due time."
