FIFA strike back at vote sellers  Reynald Temarii and Amos Adamu of the FIFA executive committee were recently banned and fined for attempting to exchange their votes for the world Cups in 2018 and 2022. Adamu, of Nigeria was banned from all football activities for the next three years and stiffly fined, while Temarii, from Tahiti, was banned from football for a year and levied a smaller fine.

Four additional FIFA officials were fined and banned for violations of ethics codes, including Slim Aloulou, who is chairman of the committee tasked with settling disputes between coaches, clubs, and players. All of these dismissals and fines are quite a scandal for FIFA. It casts a pall over the negotiations for the upcoming World Cup Tournaments at a time that the executive committee is making some very important decisions, experts report.

FIFA says that the voting for 2018 and 2022 tournaments will go on with two less executive committee members and that the contentious decision to award both tournaments at a single sitting shall proceed, as well.

The four FIFA officials banned and fined in conjunction with Aloulou were not executive committee members and their actions, therefore, had nothing to do with attempting to sell votes.
The executive committee members attempting to sell votes were caught in the act by reporters pretending to be part of an American consortium trying to steer the games to the United States.

Right now, Russia and England, along with joint bidders Belgium/Netherlands and Spain/Portugal are bidding for the 2018 Cup, while the United States, South Korea, Qatar, Japan, and Australia try for the 2022 Cup. FIFA reports that there was no collusion on the part of any bidding countries in regard to the actions by the dismissed executive committee members.