Prince Ali Bin al-Hussein, the Jordanian royal standing for the Fifa presidency, and the Uefa president Michel Platini have criticised world football’s governing body over claims it interfered in the publication of a pivotal independent report into reform of the scandal hit organisation.
Ali, a Fifa vice-president, said reports in Der Spiegel indicated there was interference in the drafting of last year’s report by Mark Pieth, the academic recruited by Sepp Blatter to chair an independent governance committee and oversee a reform process.
They showed Fifa’s chief lawyer Marco Villiger saw a draft of the report two months before publication and suggested numerous changes that cast Blatter in a better light and excised references to the long-running ISL bribery scandal.
Ali said the claims were also a reminder of why a separate report by Michael Garcia, the former head of the Fifa ethics committee’s investigatory unit, into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process needed to be published in full.
“There does appear to be evidence of interference in the drafting of the so-called independent Pieth report by Fifa. This is deeply worrying and suggests something is not right at the heart of Fifa governance,” said Ali. “Without publishing the Garcia report in full, Fifa faces the ongoing public suspicion that interference may also have occurred in that case.”
Fifa has argued that it was standard practice for the organisation that commissioned the report to comment on it before publication. Pieth said he accepted the changes because Blatter’s support was considered essential for enacting the reforms he proposed.
Pieth chaired an independent committee that published its final report in April last year. In it he claimed progress had been made on key areas of reform but called for further progress on the introduction of term limits, integrity checks for Fifa executive committee members and more transparency on salaries.
Pieth mostly blamed the lack of progress on those issues on Uefa and praised Blatter in media interviews given to support the publication of the final report, after which the committee was disbanded.
The Uefa president, Michel Platini, who decided against standing himself for the presidency but is backing three separate candidates who have promised to oppose Blatter, also hit out at Fifa in the wake of the Der Spiegel claims.
“The latest revelations regarding the Pieth report show that Fifa’s independent governance committee was anything but independent,” said a spokesman for the president. “Uefa has always wondered why it was criticised by Mr Pieth and wrongly accused of blocking Fifa reforms. Now we understand why and where it all came from.”
In his final report, Pieth blamed Uefa for a failure to introduce term limits at the 2013 Fifa Congress. However, Blatter himself also blocked a similar proposal at the 2014 Congress ahead of the World Cup.
The exchanges will be seen as the latest skirmishes in an increasingly bitter battle between Uefa and Fifa in the run-up to the latter’s presidential election. Blatter is standing again despite having previously promised to stand down.
Prince Ali, the Dutch FA president, Michael van Praag, and a Portuguese former world footballer of the year, Luis Figo, are all opposing the 78-year-old. The trio, all promising reform and greater transparency, are expected to collaborate in a joint bid to oust Blatter.
Fifa confirmed on Monday night that all four candidates had passed the so-called “integrity check” put in place by its ad-hoc electoral committee and would be officially entered into the May election.
