£1.3million Qatar World Cup bid scandal: Amos Adamu named

Former CAF Executive Committee member Dr Amos Adamu has been named in alleged £1.3million Bribery Scandal in the bid for Qatar World Cup.

A member of Qatar’s World Cup bid, Phaedra Almajid, on Thursday alleged that Adamu was involved in the bribery scandal in the explosive new Netflix series titled, FIFA Uncovered.

Aformer football federation official in Nigeria, Amos Adamu, was allegedly offered a bribe amounting to the sum of £1.3million to back the Qatar 2022 World Cup, an official has said.

Recall that Adamu was in 2017 banned for two years by the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), world football governing body for ethics violations, after he had served a three-year ban in 2010 for accepting bribes in connection with the attribution of the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar.

According to the report, Almajid claimed that she was in the room with Qatari official, Hassan Al-Thawadi, at a hotel in Angola in January 2010 when money was offered to the three men including Adamu, Issa Hayatou of Cameroon and Jacques Anouma of Ivory Coast, who were among 24 voters set to pick the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts later that year.

The vote led to Qatar winning hosting rights for the 2022 tournament ahead of Australia, Japan, South Korea and the USA.

Almajid was quoted as saying that “We were talking about how Africa had been given its chance to host the World Cup and how the Arab world should be given their chance, and then Hassan offered Hayatou $1m for Hayatou’s football federation (Cameroon) and in return, we wanted his vote.

“I remember there just being laughter and then him saying that is not enough, and so the price was upped to £1.3m just like that. It was just so simple,

“We will give you this money for your football federation; you give us your vote and thank you so much. One by one we did the same thing with Anouma and Adamu. $1.5m was offered to each member that evening in exchange for their vote. It was verbal, I never saw money.”

Almajid further alleged that the offer came at a meeting of African football federations in January 2010, a year before the FIFA vote for the 2022 host nation. Only few days ago former FIFA boss Sepp Blatter dubbed the award of hosting right for the forthcoming World Cup to Qatar as a ‘mistake.