FIFA refuses calls to release ethics report

World soccer’s governing body has fully investigated the scandal-plagued bidding process for the next two World Cups and wants everyone to know that it has things totally under control. But you’ll have to take their word on that, because FIFA says it will not make its investigation report public.

Hans-Joachim Eckert, the German judge who heads the adjudicatory arm of FIFA’s ethics committee, said in an interview with FIFA’s website that publishing the 360-page report in full “would actually put the FIFA ethics committee and FIFA itself in a very difficult situation legally.”

Instead he has promised to prepare an overview of the main findings over the next month.

The report, which includes 200,000 pages of supporting documents, looked into charges of bribery and other improprieties surrounding the controversial 2010 votes that awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 event to Qatar.

The U.S. finished second in balloting for the 2022 tournament and would likely be favored to host that World Cup should the investigation prove sufficiently damaging to Qatar’s organizing committee.

Michael Garcia, the former U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York and head of FIFA’s investigative arm, is among those asking for the report’s release in an effort to alleviate attacks on FIFA’s battered credibility. Several members of FIFA’s executive committee, including U.S. Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati and European soccer chief Michel Platini, have joined in that call for transparency.

Eckert said only four people have access to Garcia’s report, which focuses on breaches of FIFA’s ethics code by numerous individuals. London’s Guardian newspaper said that in a recent speech in England, Garcia called for FIFA to lift its veil of secrecy in favor of openness.

“The investigation and adjudication process operates in most parts unseen and unheard,” he said. “That’s a kind of system which might be appropriate for an intelligence agency but not for an ethics compliance progress in an international sports institution that serves the public and is the subject of intense public scrutiny.”

And Garcia wasn’t the only one taking shots at FIFA’s turgid and secretive leadership. UEFA president Platini, speaking to the French sports paper L’Equipe, said FIFA head Sepp Blatter has stopped serving soccer and is instead using the sport to serve him.

“Sepp is not the president of FIFA anymore. He is FIFA,” Platini said.

Blatter has said he plans to stand for re-election for a fifth term as FIFA president next year.