German lawyer Guenter Hirsch has resigned from FIFA's ethics commission in protest at what he claims is the governing body's failure to tackle alleged corruption.
The 67-year-old former president of Germany’s highest appeals court stated in a letter to ethics commission president Claudio Sulser that FIFA showed “no real interest” in trying to clean up aspects of the organisation.
“The events of the past few weeks have raised and strengthened the impression that responsible persons in FIFA have no real interest in playing an active role in resolving, punishing and avoiding violations against ethic regulations of FIFA,” Hirsch wrote in the letter, German agency DPA reported on Sunday.
FIFA's ethics panel investigated and suspended two of the body’s 24-member executive committee members, Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii, ahead of last month’s vote to decide the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments. Russia won the 2018 tender while Qatar secured the right to stage the 2022 event.
Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister David Cameron complained on Sunday about the “murky” nature of football administration after claiming that he was personally lied to by FIFA executives when he lobbied for support for England's failed 2018 World Cup bid.
“We had a great bid - technically, I think, by far the best bid - and I think the presentation we made was compelling,” Cameron told the BBC. “I definitely had a number of those FIFA executives who looked me in the eye and shook my hand and said: ‘Don't worry, we're with you.' I'm afraid that the world of football governance is rather murky in that way.”