Qatar deny ´baseless allegations´

The Qatar 2022 bid organisation claimed they have ‘nothing to hide’ in regards to the vote for the FIFA World Cup.

Rumours, allegations and questions continue to arise regarding the voting for the next two World Cups in 2010, with claims Qatar could be stripped of the 2022 tournament for improper conduct in the bidding process.

But the organisers of Qatar’s bid have slammed the allegations as ‘baseless’ in a statement released on Saturday.

“These allegations are baseless and riddled with innuendo designed to tarnish the reputation of Qatar’s 2022 Bid Committee,” the statement read.

The statement claimed Qatar had won on the back of a willingness to ‘work harder’.

“Knowing that we weren’t a key player in the football world, we knew we had to work harder than anyone else for our bid to succeed,” the statement continued.

“We knocked on more doors, made more phone calls and took more meetings than our competitors.

“But in every aspect of the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cup bidding process, we strictly adhered to FIFA’s rules and regulations.”

A FIFA ethics committee led by Michael Garcia are investigating the voting process from 2010 with speculation growing that the 2022 will be taken off Qatar and given to another of the bidders from four years ago; possibly the United States.

“It should be clear that these leaks are not an attempt to shine light on the 2018/2022 bidding process,” the statement said.

“They are, instead, a flagrant attempt to prejudice an ongoing independent investigation.

“Certainly, if the source of these leaks were genuinely concerned with the evidence, they would have provided the leaked documents to Mr Garcia, as he requested, instead of offering them to the media.