Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) President Ángel María Villar, the controversial FIFA VP on a new list of "prominent officials facing possible sanction" for corruption or wrongdoing, "tried to block this week's ground-breaking move that gave ethics investigators freedom to publish the names of those being probed," according to Andrew Warshaw of INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL. Earlier this week, FIFA's exec committee "lifted strict rules on confidentiality by giving the green light to its ethics committee to disclose information about individual cases before having to wait months, or sometimes even years, for final verdicts to be reached." No sooner had the "landmark decision" been taken than Villar, long rumored to have "failed to cooperate with the notorious Michael Garcia report" into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid process, was "cited by the ethics committee as being one of those who had been investigated." The Spaniard, who led the joint Spain-Portugal bid for '18, "is now awaiting sentence." Villar was the only member of the exec committee "who voted against giving ethic investigators greater transparency which suggests he had something to hide." One exec committee said, "The vote was 19-1." Issa Hayatou, the African football chief who chaired the meeting in the absence of Blatter, "asked who was in favor and who was against." A source said, "One hand went up against and it was Villar's." Villar's refusal to support greater transparency in "the wake of the worst corruption scandal in sporting history calls into question the decision to allow him to take over several roles and responsibilities previously handled by Platini." With "supreme irony," he replaced the Frenchman on Tuesday as interim chair of the 2018 World Cup organizing committee, "which could be regarded as a conflict of interest given his own predicament" (INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL, 10/22).
