What are the legal rights of affected parties from Qatar 2022 allegations?

Tuesday, 10 June 2014 By Jack Anderson

The revelations by the Sunday Times on 1 and 8 June¹that improper secretive payments of millions of pounds were allegedly made to officials supporting Qatar’s bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup has led to calls for it to be stripped of the hosting rights to the tournament.

Where a contract has been procured by way of corruption, then the contract cannot be allowed stand. Fraud or collusion, it is said, unravels everything.² The underlying idea is that a person should not be permitted to keep an advantage they have obtained by corrupt means.

At its core, the agreement between FIFA and Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup is contractual in nature and thus the situation based on the Sunday Times revelations is clear: the host contract is invalid and should not be allowed stand.

The application of this legal principle may be somewhat advantageous to FIFA. Last month, FIFA President Sepp Blatter admitted that FIFA’s awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was a "mistake" given the blistering summer temperatures in which the tournament will have to be played.³ In addition, human rights issues from anti-gay legislation to women’s rights to the conditions of 1.4million migrant workers on Qatari stadia sites have also embarrassed FIFA.⁴

Moreover, FIFA is well aware that the countries that unsuccessfully bid for the 2022 World Cup, and particularly the football governing body in Australia (FFA), are closely monitoring current developments. There have been hints from such sources of possible legal action for compensation premised on the fact that millions of pounds – an estimated £25million in the FFA’s case – was spent on preparations for a bidding process that now appears tainted.⁵

The above legal perspective is, however, predicated on two important points.

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Tags: Anti-Corruption | Asian Football Confederation (AFC) | Australia | Contract Law | Corruption | Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) | FIFA | Football | Fraud | Governance | Integrity | Match-Fixing | Qatar | Regulation | Winter Olympic Games | World Cup

Written by

Jack Anderson

Jack Anderson is a Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne where he teaches criminal law, the law of torts and sports law.

Jack has published widely in the area of sports law and including monographs such as The Legality of Boxing (Routledge 2007) and Modern Sports Law (Hart 2010) and edited collections such as Landmark Cases in Sports Law (Asser 2013) and EU Sports Law (Edward Elgar 2018). He was Editor-in-Chief of the International Sports Law Journal based at the International Sports Law Centre at the Asser Institute from 2013 to 2016. He is Honorary Member of the Centre for Sports Law, Sports Policy and Sports Diplomacy, University of Riejeka, Croatia and an external examiner at the University of Malaya.

An accredited workplace mediator and a Chartered Arbitrator, (CArb). Jack is an arbitrator on the international panel for Sport Resolutions UK and World Athletics’ Disciplinary Tribunal. Jack is a member of International Hockey Federation’s Integrity Unit and a founding member of the Asia Racing Federation’s Anti-Illegal Betting Taskforce. In Australia, Jack sits on the disciplinary tribunal of the Football Federation of Victoria and for Basketball Australia. In 2019, Jack was appointed by the Victoria government to the Board of Harness Racing Victoria. He is Vice-President of Gaelic Games Victoria.

From 2016-2019, he was a member of the Court of Arbitration for Sport and appeared on the list of arbitrators of the CAS Ad hoc Division for the UEFA EURO 2016 (European football championships). He was the sole CAS arbitrator at the Commonwealth Games in 2018. In 2019, he was appointed to the International Tennis Federation’s Ethics Commission and was asked by the Australian government to chair the advisory committee to prepare for the establishment of a national sports tribunal. In 2020, he was appointed as a member of the National Sports Tribunal of Australia.