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MOSCOW: FIFA President Gianni Infantino said he will not speculate on allegations in an American federal court linking 2022 World Cup host Qatar to payments received by South American soccer officials.
Infantino said he will not comment on “things that are not proven.”
Witnesses in the trial of a former FIFA vice-president and two other former soccer federation presidents from South America have provided details of irregular payments and offers of payment from Qatari officials. The three defendants deny wrongdoing.
Infantino also cautioned against Western nations who try to “paint with a dark paint, everything that comes from the East — Russia or the Arab world.”
The Swiss official, who replaced disgraced former FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, said there is a tendency for the West to think “we are the best ones ... we know how democracy works.”
Infantino’s statement came ahead of yesterday’s World Cup draw in Moscow and just a day after it was revealed that French police have questioned former FIFA Vice-President Reynald Temarii in their investigation into suspected corruption in the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.
Temarii, a former Tahiti player who served as a FIFA vice-president for Oceania, is serving an eight-year ban from football.
Officers from a French police unit that specializes in corruption and financial crimes traveled to Tahiti to question him this week at the request of French financial prosecutors leading the 2022 investigation, a French judicial official revealed.
The official spoke to The Associated Press about the police mission on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the probe. The official said Temarii was taken into police custody on Tuesday evening and held for one day while he was questioned.
Temarii was banned twice by the FIFA ethics committee — before and after FIFA executives gave the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar in a controversial and corruption-tainted vote.
He first got a one-year ban for talking to undercover reporters from The Sunday Times. He was then banned again for eight years in 2015 for taking €305,640 ($415,000) from Qatari official Mohamed bin Hammam.
The French officers who traveled to Tahiti wanted to question him about that 2011 payment, the judicial official said. It was the first time French police have questioned Temarii in the 2022 probe, the official added.
Bin Hammam, a former FIFA presidential candidate, has been banned for life from football for ethics violations.
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