Football
PA Sport 9y

FA to share FIFA file on World Cup bidding with UK MPs

The Football Association has agreed to make its secret file on FIFA members compiled during England's failed 2018 World Cup bid available to MPs.

Former sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe said the FA had agreed to make the file -- which he believes was compiled with the help of the British intelligence services -- available to be viewed by some members of the culture, media and sport select committee.

The file is believed to have been compiled on the 24 members of the FIFA executive committee who voted on the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in December 2010.

Sutcliffe, speaking in Brussels at the "New FIFA Now" summit, which is calling for reform of football's world governing body, said: "Members of the committee are going to be allowed to see that file so we will see what was held at the time."

Sutcliffe said the FA had been reluctant to show the committee the file but had eventually agreed to let some members have access to it, though it will not be handed over.

He told Press Association Sport: "I think part of this file was compiled using the intelligence services. The FA have been very cagey about it all. They were reluctant at first and said we could not see it, that it was restricted -- clearly it's not.

"Public money was used on the bid from the bidding cities and the Government was asked to give guarantees, so we need to know about this.

"When I was sports minister I didn't know anything about this cloak-and-dagger stuff so we need to know why it happened, who raised it and what it was all about."

Former FA and England 2018 chairman Lord Triesman said last month the FA "apparently also have a secret dossier with potential evidence of corruption" that they had not made available to previous investigations into his allegations of corruption surrounding the World Cup bid.

MP Damian Collins, the FIFA reform campaigner who organised the summit, told the meeting that the FA's previous willingness to cooperate had been "a bit of a sham."

He said: "I am glad the FA will be sharing that evidence. It's a bit of a sham the way the FA sought to investigate David's [Triesman's] allegations when sitting on that evidence all the time."

Labour peer Triesman, who was forced to step down as FA and bid chairman six months before the 2010 vote, has previously made a number of allegations in Parliament about World Cup bidding corruption and malpractice by FIFA members.

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