Qatar World Cup whistleblower retracts her claims of Fifa bribes

• Phaedra Almajid now says claims of bribes were fabricated • Insists that she has not been pressured or paid for retraction The “whistleblower” who alleged Qatar paid huge bribes to three African Fifa executive committee members during the gulf nation’s campaign to host the 2022 World Cup has retracted the story, saying she “fabricated” it all. The allegations, that Qatar’s bid paid $1.5m (£935,000) to the three Africans, Issa Hayatou, Jacques Anouma and Amos Adamu, to secure their votes, were not published in any newspaper, but the House of Commons select committee for culture, media and sport did publish them, based on a letter from the Sunday Times . That meant the allegations of serious corruption, revealed by “a whistleblower who had worked with the Qatar bid”, were reported here and around the world with the protection of parliamentary privilege. The whistleblower, publicly identifying herself as Phaedra Almajid, was head of international media relations at Qatar’s 2022 bid between May 2009 and March 2010. She now says she entirely fabricated that story of bribes paid by the Qatar bid, and other corruption allegations, because she wanted to “hurt” the bid after they decided to move her from her job. She said she was “furious” at the bid’s suggestion that she was not handling the international media competently, and, “acting irrationally”, decided to make up the corruption stories “to show them I could control the international media”. She now says she came to feel “sorry” and “guilty” for having severely damaged the bid’s reputation, and that she never expected her stories to reach as far as the UK parliament and an intention by Fifa to investigate them. The Guardian spoke to Almajid from Qatar itself, where we conducted an exclusive newspaper interview with the bid’s chief executive, Hassan al-Thawadi, which will appear online on Monday. He said that Almajid had been in contact with the bid wanting to retract her story, and facilitated our conversation with her. Both she and the bid insist they did not put pressure on her to issue her retraction, nor paid her or helped her in any way. “The decision to make this admission is entirely my own,” she said in a statement made on a website specifically created for her retraction. “I have not been subject to any form of pressure or been offered any financial inducement.” http://www.qatarwhistleblower.com/ http://www.sportsfeatures.com/soccernews/story/48970/world-exclusive-by-keir-radnedge-it-was-all-lies-says-qatar-2022-whistleblower Fifa World Cup 2022 David Conn guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 10, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.