French prosecutors are investigating how the process of filing applications for hosting the FIFA World Cup in Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2020. In this case, as a witness, former FIFA President Joseph Blatter was questioned.
According to the French newspaper Le Monde, prosecutors in the course of the preliminary investigation should establish whether there are signs of corruption in the actions of FIFA during the decision to hold world football championships in these countries.
With Blatter, according to the publication, representatives of the French prosecutors met a week ago, on April 20, in Switzerland.
In the Russian organizing committee, the 2018 World Cup announced that they do not know about the actions of the French prosecutor's office. The head of the organizing committee "Russia-2018" Alexei Sorokin told the R-Sport agency that he has no fears for holding the next world championship in Russia.
Supervising Sports Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko told the agency that the Russian bid for the 2018 World Cup "there was no corruption".
"If the government of France has money to conduct an investigation of applications for the world championships, this is probably a rich country," he said.. - This is ridiculous already looks, do not pay attention to all these publications ".
In March, FIFA handed over the results of its own investigation into corruption in the organization of the Swiss and US prosecutors' offices.
In May 2015, Swiss police during a raid in Zurich, arrested seven FIFA officials who had previously been charged by the US authorities. In December of the same year, the US charged 16 more functionaries of the federation.
Attorney General of the United States Loretta Lynch accused FIFA officials of deceiving the public and said that the leaders of international football in two decades have collected bribes worth $ 200 million.
Sepp Blatter was forced to resign from the position of FIFA president, along with the head of UEFA Michel Platini.
The decision to remove Blatter and Platini from football was taken by the FIFA Ethics Committee in December 2015. The reason was a large money transfer made by Blatter in 2011 in the name of Platini. Its amount was almost 2 million dollars.
Both sports functionaries appealed against the decision, noting that this money Blatter owed Platini from the end of the last century and paid perfectly legally.
In the summer of 2015, following the arrest of high-ranking FIFA officials, President Vladimir Putin said that in fair competition Russia won the right to host the 2018 World Cup. "We fought honestly, and we achieved it. We do not think that a decision can be appealed, "he said..
Putin also said that Russia conducted its own investigation of possible facts of corruption when choosing a country for the World Cup. "We have not found any evidence of possible corruption in Russia," assured the Russian president.