Jerome Champagne speaks during a news conference in London January 20, 2014 (Photo: Ruters)
FIFA presidential candidate Jerome Champagne has joined the calls for the report into the turbulent bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to be made public.
FIFA's ethics committee investigator Michael Garcia, who compiled the report, is also among those to have called for it to be published.
"Fully supporting Michael Garcia's request to release his investigation report on WC 2018 and 2022," the Frenchman wrote on Twitter. "It is essential to protect the sanctity of the World Cup as a celebration of football and of our universality."
Champagne is so far the only declared opponent to FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who will be standing for a fifth term in next year's election.
Garcia has already submitted his report to German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, chairman of the ethics committee's adjudicatory chamber, who has said that he expects to give some indication in early November of his position on the findings.
In recent weeks, FIFA executive committee members and vice-presidents Jim Boyce of Northern Ireland and Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands, as well as Moya Doidd of Australia and Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan, have all called for Garcia's full findings to be made public.
FIFA and Qatar World Cup organizers have been fending off allegations of corruption ever since the Gulf state was awarded the tournament in 2010, while the host nation has also been criticized over its treatment of migrant workers who work in the construction industry.
Qatar has denied the allegations.
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