FIFA bans Mayne-Nicholls for 7 years, believed to be over Qatar links

LONDON — The man who warned that Qatar was too hot to stage the World Cup on Monday night became the first person to be banned as a result of FIFA’s investigation into the vote that handed the Gulf state the 2022 finals tournament.

Harold Mayne-Nicholls (picture), who spearheaded the team that assessed each of the bids for the next two World Cup tournaments and flirted with challenging Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency, was suspended from all football activity for seven years by its ethics committee.

Mayne-Nicholls, 53, declared his intention to appeal on Monday — all the way up to the Court of Arbitration for Sport if necessary — and criticised FIFA for making his sanction public before that time.

“Concerning FIFA ethics committee ruling before the first instance, I will appeal to higher courts established in FIFA statutes and TAS,” he wrote on Twitter. “I wonder why @FIFAcom publishes a sanction that has outstanding resources, as this may be modified by higher courts.”

Mayne-Nicholls wrote the evaluation reports, which rated Qatar as presenting the highest risk of all nine bids for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments due to the extreme temperatures in the country. His warnings were ignored as it swept to a shock victory in the December 2010 ballot, only for FIFA to finally rule this March that the event had to be moved to the winter. That was two months before the FBI and Swiss prosecutors launched dawn raids in Zurich that coincided with criminal proceedings being opened over the discredited vote.

The Daily Telegraph revealed last year that Mayne-Nicholls was under investigation over alleged breaches of FIFA’s code of ethics following its own probe into the ballot. The former Chilean Football Federation president confirmed at the time that FIFA’s ethics committee was investigating his links to the Qatar’s Aspire Academy and emails exchanged with its director regarding the possibility of unpaid internships for his son, nephew and brother-in-law. The internships did not materialise.

Mayne-Nicholls denied any wrongdoing and vowed to cooperate with the investigation, details of which came emerged after he announced he was considering a bid for the FIFA presidency. An insider told the Telegraph that proceedings against Mayne-Nicholls pre-dated his announcement, which he ultimately did not act upon. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH