The Australian government has cleared Football Federation Australia (FFA) of corruption allegations surrounding the bid to host the 2018 or 2022 World Cups, the FFA said yesterday.
FFA chief executive officer Ben Buckley said that the government's Football World Cup Bid taskforce had cleared the federation of allegations it attempted to mislead the government by creating dual accounts to hide spending.
The Fairfax newspaper group reported last week that the FFA bid team had sought to hide the true use of millions of dollars of government funding.
Fairfax claimed to have balance sheets showing one set of accounts prepared for the government and another internal set revealing secret expenditure.
The money allegedly was for multi-million-dollar lobbyist fees and gifts of jewellery and free travel to FIFA executives and their wives.
The documents, dated mid-2009, also suggest the government was not informed of plans to give 6.5 million Australian dollars (5.5 million US dollars) in grants to football bodies in Africa, Asia and Oceania, the report said.
The FFA strongly defended its conduct of the bid, stressing it was "common practice" to hand "symbolic gifts" to visiting delegations.
Buckley said in a statement yesterday that the taskforce had written to the FFA to confirm that an inspection of the federation's books had found no evidence to support the allegations.
"We note your assurance that the document that is referenced in several media articles over the past few days was an internal and informal planning document," taskforce deputy secretary Richard Eccles wrote in the letter.
"We note that the contents of this document align with the reports provided by the FFA to the taskforce, and we accept your assurance that the existence of the planning document does not mean the FFA maintains 'dual' financial reporting and records."
Buckley said any suggestions of dual accounts were "outrageous and defamatory".
"We told (Fairfax) at the beginning that there was no issue with our accounts and it is extremely disappointing that they went ahead and made these damaging claims anyway," Buckley said.
"We are involved in an extremely sophisticated and competitive process where we are trying to bring the biggest sporting event in the world to Australia but we have always said that we would play by the rules.
"All of our operations are in line with FIFA guidelines and our financial reporting meets our obligations under the funding agreement with the government and any suggestion otherwise is completely wrong and the government has accepted that."