The vote for the hosting of the 2022 World Cup must be re-run if corruption allegations surrounding Qatar's winning campaign are proved to be accurate, Lord Goldsmith, a member of FIFA's Independent Governance Committee, said on Monday.
A British newspaper on Sunday claimed it had evidence that around $5 million was paid to officials in return for votes for Qatar's successful bid, allegations organisers have "vehemently" denied.
Goldsmith, Britain's former Attorney General, said that if football's world governing body was to weather scandals surrounding World Cup bids, it had to "to produce a convincing and transparent answer to these allegations".
"I believe that if these allegations are shown to be true, then the hosting decision for Qatar has to be rerun," he told BBC radio. "I don't see how if it is proved, it is not proved yet though there is a case to answer, if it is proved, that the decision to give Qatar the World Cup was procured by frankly one can describe it in no other way as bribery and improper influence, then that decision ought not to stand."
The man at the centre of the allegations, Qatari former FIFA executive committee member and Asian Football Confederation chief Mohamed Bin Hammam, was not an official member of the bid team and has yet to comment publicly on the allegations.
If the unprecedented decision was taken to re-run the vote, it is fair to assume that the losers in the 2010 ballot, who had already spent millions of dollars satisfying the technical criteria for a bid, would be in the frame.
The convoluted way the 2018 and 2022 bidding processes became intertwined muddies the waters somewhat, but the United States, South Korea, Japan and Australia could all claim to have been most hard-done-by if any corruption was proven.
