French Authorities Have Opened An Investigation Into The 2018 & 2022 World Cup Bidding Process

Soccer News
French Authorities Have Opened An Investigation Into The 2018 & 2022 World Cup Bidding Process

If you thought the controversy over how the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting rights were awarded had died down, think again.

Earlier today the National Public Prosecutor’s Office in France announced they were launching a probe into how and why the 2018 and 2022 tournaments were awarded to Russia and Qatar, respectively.

According to Le Monde, the investigation will focus on corruption allegations.

Last week, none other than disgraced former FIFA president Sepp Blatter offered testimony as part of the investigation. No details yet on what Blatter told French prosecutors.

The scandal surrounding the World Cup bidding process is just one facet of the tangled web of corruption and deceit endemic to football’s governing body, which finally started being exposed to sunlight nearly two years ago when the US Department of Justice under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch raided a Zurich hotel and arrested several FIFA officials. The breadth and scale of the probe is too much to sum up in this article, but you can dig into our FIFA tag to check out our past coverage and get a sense of how deep this rabbit hole goes.

Lynch gave assurances that the investigation would continue in her absence days before her term ended along with the rest of the Obama Administration. Current Attorney General Jeff Sessions has yet to offer any public comment on how the DOJ under his direction will handle the probe going forward.

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