A report released overnight by the FIFA ethics committee has revealed that Australian taxpayers’ money was used to pay bribes as part of our failed bid to host the 2022 World Cup, the rights to which eventually went to the very cool state of Qatar, where the temperature is always Chill°c.
Summarised by the chairman of the ethics committee’s adjudicatory chamber, Joachim Eckert, the exhaustive report found that the Australian bid team tried to buy votes from decision makers using the $46 million that the then Labor government had invested in the bid. Bribes were conducted under the guise of slipping The D [donations] “towards initiatives in countries with ties to Fifa executive committee members with the intention to advance its bid to host”.
Furthermore, and most perplexingly, the Football Federation of Australia were also well aware of this kind of scrub conduct and the ramifications of letting it go unchecked, which, strangely enough, had no bearing on Australia still receiving only one vote of confidence.
In short, the prospect of Australia ever hosting the World Cup is – for wont of a better word – fetch.
via The Guardian
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