New York: Former US federal prosecutor Michael Garcia on Wednesday resigned as chief corruption investigator for Fifa after football’s governing body rejected his appeal against the handling of his report into the votes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
Garcia said he had found “serious and wide-ranging issues” in the bidding for the 2018 World Cup won by Russia and the 2022 tournament to be held in Qatar.
“The lack of leadership on these issues within Fifa leads me to conclude that my role in this process is at an end,” Garcia said in a statement announcing his resignation.
Garcia quit one day after the governing body rejected his appeal over the follow-up to his 18-month inquiry. Garcia had complained that a summary of his report released by Fifa’s top judge Hans-Joachim Eckert was “incomplete and erroneous”.
Eckert had said there was no evidence of corruption and that there should be no new vote for the 2018 World Cup to be held in Russia and the 2022 tournament in Qatar, which has faced repeated corruption allegations.
The departure of the top US lawyer increases pressure on the Fifa leadership one day ahead of an executive committee meeting to decide whether Garcia’s report should be released in full.
Garcia said in the statement the climate at Fifa has changed for the worse in recent months.
He said that, for two years after being named head of the Fifa ethics committee investigatory chamber in July 2012, “I felt that the Ethics Committee was making real progress in advancing ethics enforcement at Fifa. In recent months, that changed.”
