ZURICH (Reuters) - FIFA president Sepp Blatter side-stepped demands for a report into the 2018/2022 World Cup bidding process to be made public on Friday and dismissed a controversy over $25,000 watches given to his executive committee members as a "non-problem."
Several executive committee members have called for the report by ethics investigator Michael Garcia to be made public and Garcia himself this week also said it should be published.
However, Blatter said that FIFA's executive committee had "no direct contact from Mr Garcia".
"The only contact we have had with the president of the (ethics committee) investigatory chamber has been his press releases that we have received in FIFA," Blatter told reporters.
"But we have not received any demands or requests from Mr Garcia to speak to us, or to ask that we should make a decision on this report and to publish this report, and to change the confidentiality which is in the code of ethics of FIFA."
FIFA's legal director Marco Villiger added that confidentiality of the witnesses was an issue.
"The code of ethics is based on certain principles, one of which is confidentiality," he said.
"Co-operation between witnesses and the ethics committee is based on confidentiality, if not perhaps certain witnesses, whistleblowers or other parties might not co-operate to such an extent," he said, adding that 75 witnesses had been heard during Garcia's investigation.
Garcia, a former United States attorney, is investigating whether there was any corruption in the turbulent bidding process four years ago which ended in the 2018 World Cup being awarded to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar.
FIFA and Qatar World Cup organizers have been fending off allegations of corruption ever since the Gulf state was awarded the tournament, while Qatar has also been criticized over its treatment of migrant workers who work in the construction industry. Qatar has denied the allegations.
FIFA was involved in further controversy last week when its executive committee members were among more than 50 football officials who were told to return watches, worth an estimated $25,000 each, which were handed out by the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) during the World Cup.
"This problem of the watches is finally a non-problem because... the CBF at the occasion of its 100 years, and after having been five times World Cup champions and organizing now the World Cup, they had the good intention to give a gift to the members of the executive committee," said Blatter.
"Speaking about corruption, that is totally wrong because Brazil has already obtained everything they wanted to have... and (the watches were) packed in a baggage they have given to everybody, some of the people hadn't even opened this package.
"The ethics committee has not opened any case against members and has only said please bring back these watches so it is a non-case and it has shown that our ethics committee is working."
(editing by Justin Palmer)
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