Qatar will not be able to mount a legal challenge to Fifa if football's governing body strips it of the right to stage the 2022 World Cup. As controversy continues to rage over allegations of corruption surrounding the bid process, it has emerged that Qatar agreed to sign away its right to take any form of legal action against Fifa when it made its original tender for the tournament in 2010.
The Independent on Sunday can also reveal that a mechanism is available to football's governing body to order a new vote whereby infringements of its code of ethics are cited.
Qatar, which denies all corruption allegations, is now facing a major fight to hang on to the World Cup, and the subject is certain to feature strongly when Fifa holds its congress in Sao Paulo on Wednesday, one day before the 2014 World Cup opens.
It had been assumed that one reason Fifa might fail to order a revote for 2012 was fear of legal action by Qatar. But the legal officer of one of the bidding nations told The IoS: "All the bidding countries had to sign a registration document in which they agreed to be bound by Fifa's code of ethics. In a normal contract with an organisation based in Zurich, you would expect the agreement to be subject to Swiss law.
But Fifa's code makes it clear that all disputes are decided by the appeals committee of Fifa's ethics committee. The appeals committee can be taken to the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration in Sport. But this is a special arbitration body for sport, not a court of law.
''So should Fifa decide to have a revote, Qatar cannot take Fifa to a Swiss court. All bidding countries knew they were giving up their legal rights when bidding for the World Cup. But so keen are countries to get the World Cup, they happily agreed to do so."
This did not seem to matter at the time of the bidding as nobody expected to Qatar to win. Since then, the decision has proved so controversial that Fifa hired former US attorney Michael Garcia to investigate both the 2022 vote and the 2018 vote in which Russia beat England. Mr Garcia will complete his report tomorrow, although it will not be submitted to Fifa until next month.