The 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups are set go ahead in Russia and Qatar as planned after FIFA’s ethics committee said it could find no grounds for reopening the controversial bidding process.

An exhaustive report by the ethics committee of football’s world governing body found some worrying episodes in the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments but said there was not enough evidence to justify a revote.

The report said Australia’s bid for 2022 contained “certain indications of potentially problematic conduct of specific individuals in the light of relevant FIFA Ethics rules”.

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“The report identified certain occurrences that were suited to impair the integrity of the 2018/2022 World Cups bidding process,” the 42-page report said.

“While the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber fully concurs with the relevant findings, the occurrences at issue were, in the chairman’s assessment, only of very limited scope.

“In particular, the effects of these occurrences on the bidding process as a whole were far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it.

“The assessment of the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cups bidding process is therefore closed for the FIFA ethics committee.”

England’s bid for 2018 also came under fire for “inappropriate requests” from former CONCACAF president Jack Warner, a FIFA powerbroker at the time, in what it said was “an apparent violation of bidding rules”.

Ethics investigator Michael Garcia still intends to open formal investigations against individuals, who were not named in the report released by the chairman of the ethics committee’s adjudicatory chamber, Hans Joachim Eckert.

FIFA and Qatar World Cup organisers have been fending off allegations of corruption since the Gulf state was awarded the tournament.

Qatar, which has repeatedly denied the allegations, has also been criticised over its treatment of migrant workers in the construction industry.

The 2018 tournament was awarded to Russia as part of the same bidding process which culminated in December 2010.

Allegedly corrupt links ‘distant’ from bid teams

Mohammed bin Hammam … banned by FIFA for life. Photo: Getty

The relationship between former Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Bin Hammam, banned for life by FIFA in 2011, and the Qatar bidding team was a “distant relative to the relationships of other FIFA Executive Committee members from bid nations”.

The report said that it could not find any evidence of misconduct connected to the Russian bid, although it added not all records had been available to the investigation.

“The Russia 2018 Bid Committee made only a limited amount of documents available for review, which was explained by the fact that the computers used at the time by the Russia Bid Committee had been leased and then returned to their owner after the Bidding Process,” it read.

“The owner has confirmed that the computers were destroyed in the meantime.”

Much of the report was procedural and devoted to explaining the background to World Cup bidding processes and FIFA ethics guidelines.

Although it avoided naming individuals it said two veteran FIFA executive committee members had resisted efforts to “hold them to the same rules as bid teams”.

It also said “two of the executive committee’s most senior members challenged the Ethics Committee’s independence and authority.”

The report exonerated FIFA president Sepp Blatter. Photo: Getty

“The line between a bid team’s conduct … and improper conduct is a very fine one. From which point on lobbyism must be considered as improper conduct is, for example, not always clear,” the report concluded.

“The perception for example, according to which a FIFA World Cup vote must have been ‘bought’ if the host selected is not the one that has been generally considered a favourite (a position that is quite common in the media), is mere speculation and far from anything a judicial body like the FIFA Ethics Committee is allowed to accept as proof.”

The report also made a point of exonerating FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

“The one concrete allegation against the President, concerning an account purportedly held in his name at a US bank, was demonstrably false,” it read.

“Mr Blatter has implemented a number of critical reforms, including those that made this inquiry possible.

“The bidding process established by FIFA was for the most part fair and thorough, although the Executive Committee’s obligations in that process – including its members’ obligations to abide the same reporting requirements placed on the bid teams – should have been made more explicit.”