The Australian Federal Police says it is evaluating allegations of misappropriated funds in Australia’s $42.5m bid for the 2022 World Cup.
Fairfax Media reports that the AFP has been in contact with officials from the Department of Health and Sport as they look into how FIFA executive Jack Warner received $500,000 in funds from Australia earmarked for a stadium building fund.
National sports minister Sussan Ley has made it clear Australia would not bid again to host the World Cup until there are major changes at FIFA.
“This, more than ever, resolves my view that appropriate governance reforms at FIFA must be undertaken, and succeed, before Australia could ever entrust taxpayer dollars towards any bid overseen by FIFA,” she said.
FFA chairman says bid was ‘clean’
Football Federation Australia (FFA) has sent an open letter to Australia’s football community to assure it that Australia’s bid for 2022 was devoid of corruption.
“We ran a clean bid,” FFA chairman Frank Lowy says. “I know that others did not.
“But did we make mistakes? Yes. Were we naïve? In some cases, yes. Would we do things differently in future? Absolutely.”
Lowy admits that Australia was playing “catch up” with the rest of the footballing world when they were fielding a bid, which led them to make poor judgement calls.
“This led us to recruit, on the advice of FIFA’s leadership, consultants who ultimately proved less than effective to say the least.”
Lowy said the $500,000 was a compromise from the $4 million that the North and Central American Football Association (CONCACAF) was asking for the development of the Centre of Excellence in Trinidad & Tobago.
“The chief executive of the Centre, not Warner, gave us the bank account details for CONCACAF,” Lowy said.
“We paid the money into that account and received confirmation it was received by the bank. It was paid into a CONCACAF account, not Jack Warner’s personal account.”
When the corruption came to light, the FFA provided all the information on their donation to authorities, Mr Lowy says.