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FIFA’s
executive committee began a two-day meeting on Thursday with the task
of reducing the confusion surrounding a World Cup bidding process being
played out against the backdrop of a corruption scandal.

FIFA’s executive
committee is due to choose the hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups
in Zurich on December 2 but, with barely more than one month to go, the
voting process has not been announced and it is not clear how many
voters there will be. The bidders – Russia, England, Spain/Portugal,
and Belgium/Netherlands for 2018 and Japan, South Korea, Australia,
United States and Qatar for 2022 – say they are carrying on regardless
of the troubles. “Actually, it hasn’t had any effect,” Alexei Sorokin,
the Russian bid’s chief executive officer, told the International
Football Arena conference in Zurich. “We’re doing as we did before.
Today, we don’t know the number of executive committee members who will
vote. Other than that, we don’t see any impact. We are still
concentrating on presenting our case.”

Cleaning the mess

Last week, FIFA
provisionally suspended two members of the executive committee – Amos
Adamu of Nigeria and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti – over allegations they
offered to sell their votes to undercover newspaper reporters from the
Sunday Times. FIFA’s ethics committee is due to make a definitive
decision on the pair by mid November. It could extend the suspensions,
meaning that there will be only 22 or 23 voters at the December 2
election.

FIFA is also
investigating claims of collusion and vote-swapping between unnamed
bidders for the 2018 and 2022 bids, which is banned by the rules. The
ultimate penalty for this is disqualification. This week, the Swiss
parliament’s legal committee said it was considering an amendment to
the country’s anti-corruption laws, which do not currently cover
officials from the international sports organizations based in the
country. FIFA are due to hold a media conference after the meeting on
Friday (9 a.m. ET) to announce the committee’s decisions.