The joint Dutch-Belgian bid for the 2018 World Cup will be submitted
for a FIFA Ethics Committee investigation, the KNVB has announced.
Disgraced former FIFA Vice President Mohamed bin Hammam.(The Guardian)
The Royal Dutch Football Association
(KNVB) has announced that it will submit itself to an investigation by
FIFA's independent Ethics Committee after allegations of bribery were
made against its unsuccessful joint bid with Belgium to host the 2018 World Cup.
The
KNVB has also ordered an independent audit into the bid, which was hit
by corruption claims in a report by Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant this
month.
That publication's article claimed the paper was in possession of documents showing bid organisers paid €10,000 to Amadou Dialllo in 2009, at a time when the lobbyist was affiliated with now disgraced former FIFA vice-president Mohamed bin Hammam.
In
a statement released on Tuesday, the KNVB said its legal team had found
no evidence of wrongdoing after studying documentation related to the
2018 bid, although it added it would wait for further information from
the Royal Belgian Football Association (URBSFA/KBVB) "to get a total
picture".
The statement read: "The federal
administration of the KNVB, at a meeting on Wednesday, December 16
decided to give a forensic accountant to audit the HollandBelgiumBid.
"[This
is] following an article on December 12 in De Volkskrant, in which the
actions of the KNVB and the Belgian Football Association in an attempt
to bring the 2018 World Cup to the Low Countries, is discussed in
detail.
"All available documents have
been taken out in the open and further studied by lawyers and
controllers of the union. Based on this fact reconstruction… no
violation occurred.
"To get the complete
picture, the KNVB [is] still awaiting information from the Belgian
FA. Furthermore, the KNVB will turn to the ethics committee of FIFA,
which previously evaluated the HollandBelgiumBid... as a result of the
research integrity of the American researcher [former chairman of the
investigatory chamber of the Ethics Committee, Michael] Garcia.
"[To
ensure] completeness and accuracy the KNVB wants this to be checked by
an external audit firm. It is expected that this process will be
completed in the first quarter of 2016. When the independent
investigation is completed, the KNVB will report."
Russia
won the hosting rights to the 2018 World Cup and the bidding processes
for this and the 2022 tournament in Qatar are being examined by Swiss
and US prosecutors.
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