Alexei Sorokin, who led Russia’s successful bid to host the 2018 World Cup, has denied claims he helped obstruct the Fifa investigation into claims of corruption in the bidding process. On Thursday, Russia were cleared of any wrongdoing by the world governing body even though they were found to have destroyed the computers on which vital evidence may have been stored.
The Fifa report, published by German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert following an 18-month investigation by American attorney Michael Garcia, stated: "The Russia bid committee made only a limited number of documents available for review, which was explained by the fact that the computers used at the time by the Russia bid committee had been leased and returned to their owner after the bidding process.
“The owner has confirmed the computers were destroyed in the meantime.”
Sorokin, who now runs Russia’s local organising committee, insists there was no wrongdoing, however.
He said, in remarks reported by the Guardian: “Everything we could supply to the investigation, we did.
"We are sure that our bid was transparent. We did not commit any violations. We were always sure that they would not find anything unlawful. We handed over everything that we could. You have to understand that four years had passed and some information is simply forgotten."
Garcia has since distanced himself from the report and said he will take his case to the Fifa appeal committee after claiming the summary "contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts".
source: goal.com
No comments:
Post a Comment