The Qatari Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy issued a recent statement in which it denied all bribery allegations to win the 2022 World cup bid, reports Inas Mazhar. Earlier this week, The Sunday Times issued a report that shocked the world of football. The renowned English newspaper said it had obtained millions of secret documents — emails, letters and bank transfers — which prove that the former Qatari football official and FIFA vice president, Mohamed Bin Hammam, made payments totalling US$5m (£3m) to football officials in return for their support for the Qatari bid. Bin Hammam was a member of the Executive Committee, which voted in 2010 for the host nations of both the 2018 and 2022, before another scandal of the same sort drove him out of the world of football in 2011. The Sunday Times report came just two weeks before the kick-off to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The issue has been making worldwide headlines in the different media outlets, placing FIFA in a critical situation as the world's attention now shifts to Qatar not to Brazil. Qatar's Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy immediately issued a response in a statement denying all allegations. The statement read as follows: “The Qatar 2022 Bid Committee always upheld the highest standard of ethics and integrity in its successful bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. “In regard to the latest allegations from The Sunday Times, we say again that Mohamed Bin Hammam played no official or unofficial role in Qatar's 2022 Bid Committee. “As was the case with every other member of FIFA's Executive Committee, our bid team had to convince Mr. Bin Hammam of the merits of our bid. “We are cooperating fully with Mr. Garcia' s ongoing investigation and remain totally confident that any objective enquiry will conclude we won the bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup fairly. “Following today's newspaper articles, we vehemently deny all allegations of wrongdoing. We will take whatever steps are necessary to defend the integrity of Qatar's bid and our lawyers are looking into this matter. The right to host the tournament was won because it was the best bid and because it is time for the Middle East to host its first FIFA World Cup.” On the same day Qatar issued its statement, Jim Boyce, a FIFA vice-president and Britain's representative on the FIFA Executive Committee, said he favoured a rerun of the vote for the 2022 World Cup if the governing body's chief investigator uncovers corruption in the Qatar bid. Boyce, who joined the FIFA Executive Committee after the voting process, said that all the English newspaper's evidence should be submitted to Michael Garcia, who was given full authority by FIFA to handle these matters. According to Boyce, if Garcia's recommendations are that wrongdoing happened for that vote for the 2022 World Cup, he, as a member of the executive committee, would have absolutely no problem whatsoever if the recommendation was for a re-vote. Boyce told the BBC's Radio 5 Live's Sports Week that Garcia will “absolutely” have to widen his investigation to examine the evidence found by The Sunday Times.
