ZURICH, Switzerland, June 7 (UPI) -- Russia and Qatar could lose their 2018 and 2022 World Cup soccer tournaments, respectively, if evidence surfaces that they "bought" their hosting rights with bribes, a FIFA executive said Sunday.
Domenico Scala, the independent chairman of FIFA's audit and compliance committee, told Swiss newspaper Sonntagszeitung on Sunday the respective nations would lose their World Cup tournaments independently or collectively if such evidence is discovered -- which, he noted, has not happened so far.
"Should there be evidence that the awards to Qatar and Russia came only because of bought votes, then the awards could be canceled," he said.
Scala said the same thing more than a year ago, but his renewed remarks may be taken more seriously in the wake of FIFA President Sepp Blatter's abrupt resignation last week and the arrests of 14 people accused of taking bribes and kickbacks in FIFA activities for almost the last quarter-century.
Seven of those arrested are FIFA officials, and two are former officials. The other five are sports marketing and broadcasting executives, investigators said. They are accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of involvement in racketeering, wire fraud, money-laundering conspiracies and other crimes worth a reported $150 million over a period of 24 years.
"Beginning in 1991, two generations of soccer officials, including the then-presidents of two regional soccer confederations ... used their positions of trust ... to solicit bribes from sports marketers in exchange for the commercial rights to their soccer tournaments," U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said May 27. "They did this over and over, year after year, tournament after tournament."
Among those arrested and accused are two FIFA vice presidents and a former vice president, BBC Sport reported. Swiss authorities are also looking into FIFA's bidding processes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
Russia and Qatar won hosting rights to the events during a FIFA Executive Committee vote in December 2010. Russia won the 2018 World Cup in the second round of voting. Qatar needed four rounds to win the 2022 tournament -- defeating the United States in the last round by a vote of 14-to-8.
A month before the vote, two executive committee members and four former members were suspended by FIFA for ethics violations. Amos Adamu, of Nigeria, was suspended for three years and fined 10,000 Swiss francs after officials say he tried to sell his vote for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments. Reynald Temarii was suspended for one year and fined 5,000 Swiss francs. Neither were allowed to vote on the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts.
The reported collusion involving both members was uncovered by Britain's The Sunday Times, which published secretly taped videos showing the men purportedly asking for money in exchange for votes.
Earlier this month, Temarii was banned from soccer for eight years for taking nearly $340,000 from a Qatari powerbroker to pay legal costs associated with his part in a corruption scandal involving the 2022 tournament.
"For as long as I am in the ethics committee, we will have a zero tolerance policy for all violations of standards," FIFA ethics committee chairman Claudio Sulser said at the time. "We don't want cheaters, we don't want doping, we don't want abuses to be accepted."
Sulser is now in charge of the FIFA inquiry into the 2018 and 2022 host selection processes, which began attracting controversy before the winning bids were even announced.
In September 2010, FIFA investigated claims of a conspiracy to trade votes between Qatar and a joint bid by Spain and Portugal for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments. The governing body said it found no evidence of wrongdoing. However, Britain's Daily Telegraph later reported that FIFA chief Blatter admitted the two bids had indeed traded votes, but that it didn't affect the final outcomes.
In November, a FIFA-commissioned investigation into the 2018 and 2022 bidding process cleared Russia and Qatar of any violations. That investigation, however, was based on the findings of independent American attorney Michael Garcia -- who later claimed his work had been misrepresented by FIFA.
Garcia subsequently said the investigative report "contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations," and called for his original 350-page report to be published. Garcia's investigative work was not made public, however, for legal reasons.
Scala said, though, that he has reviewed Garcia's report -- along with legal experts -- and that it contains nothing that would warrant Russia or Qatar to be stripped of their hosting rights, BBC Sport's report said.
Great Britain has indicated it is willing to accept either tournament if they are stripped from their present hosts. Originally a bidder for the 2018 event, Britain was eliminated in the first round of the 2010 vote. However, British Football Association chief executive Martin Glenn said, "We are really not interested," noting that the tournaments should be played in Russia and Qatar.
FIFA also attracted even more controversy Sunday, amid a new development that claims Morocco actually won rights to host the 2010 World Cup -- but lost out to South Africa's bid, which allegedly swooped in and bought the necessary vote at the last minute.
