By RYAN TOLMICH
Less than 24 hours after his appeal was rejected, Michael Garcia has resigned from the FIFA Ethics Committee.
Garcia, who commissioned a report concerning the bidding process surrounding the 2018/22 World Cups, stepped down from his role citing a “lack of leadership” from FIFA’s higher ups regarding the handling of his findings.
“(The) Eckert Decision made me lose confidence in the independence of the Adjudicatory Chamber, (but) it is the lack of leadership on these issues within FIFA that leads me to conclude that my role in this process is at an end,” Garcia wrote. “No independent governance committee, investigator, or arbitration panel can change the culture of an organization.”
“For the first two years … I felt that the ethics committee was making real progress in advancing ethics enforcement at FIFA,” Garcia added. “In recent months, that changed.”
In addition, Garcia revealed that he has lost confidence in colleague Hans Joachim-Eckert, who Garcia claims misrepresented his work in a summary that the German judge released to the public.
“When viewed in the context of the report it purported to summarize, no principled approach could justify the Eckert Decision’s edits, omissions, and additions,” Garcia wrote.
“It now appears that, at least for the foreseeable future, the Eckert Decision will stand as the final word on the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cup bidding process.”
Garcia’s appeal to publicly release his findings was denied Tuesday by FIFA’s appeals committee, who ruled that the report was not legally binding.
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What do you make of Garcia’s resignation? How will this impact FIFA going forward?
Share your thoughts below.
No bureau in play here, actually
This is so depressing……. rich, corrupt, bureacrats win out again.
And nothing will be done unless the sponsors and federations start doing something. But that will not happen as it’s money for the sponsors and can you actually see large amounts of people stop buying Adidas, McDonalds, using Visa, Coca-cola? If only MLS would do something like work with Adidas about this. U.S. Soccer, grow a pair, and boycott. Oh yeah, money.
for f%*’s sake leak this thing already
Poor b@stard. I bet he showed up to work with his little briefcase everyday thinking he was making a difference.
Unfurtunatelly, his reputation and past dealings prevents anybody to take seriously any “investigation” he’s involved with.
Considering the skeletons in his closet we can just forget about him releasing any documents related to this. .
Moving On.
When is it time for confederations to start breaking away and starting there own organization to compete with FIFA? Can we get CONCACAF, UEFA and maybe Oceania? What if we go country by country to break away?
This sickens me that I support the world cup.
Personally, I’d bet money that Sunil has already had a few discreet calls to this effect. WHEN the Copa America is a huge success in 2016, people are going to start to wonder out loud why anybody needs FIFA at all, if members are perfectly capable or organizing inter-federation tournaments without them.
Weren’t there other ethics investigators — either in-house or hired — who also resigned or quit when they became frustrated with FIFA’s conduct?
These folks won’t change until entire national federations “resign” from FIFA.
good, no reason to stick with them. he should accidentally leave a thumb drive with the report somewhere that magically gets picked up by a news organization.
Boom! DC United Stadium approved!
(Per ESPN)
?Garcia also revealed that the FIFA executive committee led by President Sepp Blatter tried to have disciplinary proceedings opened against him in September. The attempt was rejected by the chairman of FIFA’s disciplinary panel.”
Love how Blatter tried to go after the guy FIFA hired simply because the report wasn’t to his liking.
Every time you think that these guys surely must have run out of new ways to show how corrupt they are, they come up with new ones.
comment of the day.
Nico, there are plenty of rich Arabs and Africans wheeling and dealing behind the scenes at fifa. Don’t fool yourself into thinking corruption is only a white man’s game.
Touche, I’ll give you that. But when it all boils down, it’s just a political dance between UEFA vs Sepp.
Hey Garcia, sorry you learned the hard way that FIFA is nothing but a bunch of rich, white men who like to pretend they’re in government.
No, there are rich men of other races involved too.
actually the majority of the FIFA executive committee is made up of other races and other sexes
I really think you are giving Garcia way too much credit for being a “good guy” here. You don’t have to be as intelligent as his resume suggests he is in order to know what was always going to happen here. Anybody with common sense and a rudimentary knowledge of FIFA’s track record saw this coming in their sleep.
Garcia took his nice paycheck, got his PR for his private practice, and then excused himself after loudly expressing his “outrage” as though any of this was somehow a shocking ambush for him.
In the end, all this amounts to is a total non-contribution. Nobody is any better off for this process; Well, except Garcia.
Good for him. Now the guy can go on a media tour and tell us all about the inner workings of Fifa.
Hollywood, start writing the movie script.
Wikileaks anyone?
I seriously think that’s the only way to solve this. Unless the Guardians of Peace finally finishes off Sony and goes after FIFA. But FIFA hasn’t stripped anything away from North Korea. They’re smarter than that.
Sepp’s smarter than that. You know he visits N. Korea every four years and gives them a gold painted aluminum foil replica of the World Cup trophy that one of his grandchildren made.
Shocked! I tell you I’m shocked that FIFA would not be transparent on every issue. How long did it take Garcia to recognize that he was working for a bunch of unprincipled crooks? Talk about putting the game into disrepute!
Why wouldn’t he just leak the findings on his own? FIFA won’t change unless individual federations disassociate themselves, and that won’t happen without international media attention.
he would be doing the entire world a huge service!
i imagine that his report is property of fifa (they were the one’s calling for, funding and reviewing it) but if details have been found and they won’t be let known then hopefully a former employee can leak some incriminating info.
i’m just not sure what or who will force change.. fifa doesn’t have to answer to anybody. hopefully sponsors drop fifa until the “culture” has drastically changed; only realistic hope i see.
Just a guess, but I’m sure his contract had some kind of disclosure or confidentiality clause or he’d have leaked it immediately after the Eckert Decision.
He’s an attorney who prepared this investigation report for his client – FIFA. I don’t think it would do much for his career for him to be the guy who leaks his own client’s privileged material. In addition, doing so would be highly unethical!
More unethical than staying silent and essentially becoming complicit in covering up the improprieties during the bidding process or allowing the human rights violations to continue?
Sticky situation from that viewpoint, but if I were him then I would feel like every worker that dies building the Qatari stadiums from here on out would be my responsibility, or at the very least something I may have been able to do something about.
Someone start a #FIFAkills campaign or something…
You don’t really understand the ethical obligations of an attorney. If a murder defendant confesses to his attorney that he did it, the attorney can’t turn around and tell that to the jury (or anyone else).
That’s true, though it’s not exactly correct to apply the concept of attorney-client privlege here.
Garcia’s professional status as an attorney is not really the issue here. He is not actually practicing law (I’d be surprised if he’s even licensed in Switzerland). He’s a consultant, who’s been hired due to his expertise in conducting investigations of this type and scope.
What’s at issue is most likely a confidentiality agreement he signed as part of his engagement, same as plenty of us non-attorney’s have to sign when doing consulting work. If broken, his professional reputation would certainly suffer (at least in theyes of potential clients), and he’d probably forfeit his fees if FIFA could reasonably trace the leak to his office.
The distinction is that the privlege is implied when a person in the U.S. engages an attorney to act on their behalf. In this case, the obligation only exists because Garcia likely signed a non-disclosure agreement to that effect.
An attorney hired to conduct an investigation is practicing law, not acting as a “consultant.” In addition, he agreed to abide by FIFA’s ethics code which gives it control over dissemination of the contents.