Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy says he is prepared to co-operate with a Senate inquiry to prove Australia didn’t pay any bribes as part of its failed bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
In an interview with Sky News to be released today, Lowy reportedly stands firm on his claim last week that Australia ran a clean bid in the face of the corruption scandal that has engulfed the sport’s governing body, FIFA, in the past fortnight and forced its president Sepp Blatter to announce his resignation.
He also expresses his lament that Australia’s $46 million bid, which earned one vote as the World Cup was controversially awarded to Qatar, never stood a chance.
“I’m not the best loser in the world. I have nightmares about all the work we did. And we didn’t get anywhere,” said Lowy, who has called for Blatter to stand down as soon as possible rather than keep his role while waiting for an election to find his replacement.
“You just go to get on with it. I take the responsibility and I take the blame. I should have known better.”
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The 2022 bid process is under fresh investigation by Swiss authorities, amid the separate arrests of 14 people connected to FIFA on corruption charges.
One of the arrested men, disgraced former FIFA vice president Jack Warner, is alleged to have stolen $500,000 from Australia’s bid.
Lowy last week said Warner, the president of CONCACAF and a FIFA executive committee member since 1983, had a “reputation as a colourful character”.
But the chief of the north and central American football association was considered “hugely influential” to the World Cup vote, Lowy said.
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CONCACAF asked for a $4 million donation towards a centre of excellence in Warner’s Trinidad and Tobago, but the FFA and Australian bid team offered $500,000.
Lowy said the Australian money was paid to CONCACAF but it was ultimately found that Warner “had committed fraud and misappropriated the funds – in other words he had stolen the money from CONCACAF”.
A FIFA official was quoted as saying on Sunday that Russia and Qatar could lose the right to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups if evidence is found of corruption in the bidding process.
The comments by the head of FIFA’s auditing and compliance committee came as bribery claims mounted against Warner.
“If evidence exists that Qatar and Russia received the (World Cup) awards only thanks to bribes, then the awards could be annulled,” Domenico Scala told the Swiss newspaper Sonntagszeitung.
He said however that “this evidence has not been provided” so far.
His comments are the first by a senior FIFA official to even open up the possibility of either Russia or Qatar being stripped of the right to host the football extravaganza.
