The FIFA ethics committee has banned Harold Mayne-Nicholls, former
chairman of the Bid Evaluation Group for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World
Cups, for seven years.
The former Chilean Football Association President has been from
taking part in any kind of football-related activity following email
conversations with the head of Qatar’s Aspire Academy.
The Chilean, who also at one stage considered standing against Sepp Blatter
for the Fifa presidency, was being investigated over an email exchange
with the head of Qatar’s Aspire Academy. During the bidding process,
Mayne-Nicholls asked if his sons might be able to train there at his
expense and also inquired about opportunities for his brother-in-law, a
tennis coach. Nothing came of the exchange and yet now Mayne-Nicholls
has been banned for seven years.
Mayne-Nicholls was one of five football officials against whom cases
were opened in the wake of the publication of a controversial summary of
Michael Garcia’s report into World Cup bidding. Garcia subsequently resigned as head of the investigatory arm of Fifa’s ethics committee in protest at the way his 430-page report had been summarised.
The remaining outstanding cases are against Spain’s Fifa
vice-president Ángel María Villar Llona, Thailand’s Worawi Makudi and
Franz Beckenbauer, who has since retired from Fifa.
Mayne-Nicholls was incredulous that he was being investigated given
that he was critical of Qatar’s suitability in his final report and that
nothing came of the exchanges with Aspire.
“For me it’s really strange that [the ethics committee] are losing
energy, money and time over such an investigation but those are the
rules and I have to follow them,” he said last year.
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