Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Qatar has been cleared of any wrongdoing during the World Cup 2022 bidding process and there will be no re-vote for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, according to the FIFA inquiry report.

FIFA ethics judge Joachim Eckert formally ended a probe into the bidding contests, almost four years after the vote by the governing body's scandal-tainted executive committee. No proof was found of bribes or voting pacts.

"The evaluation of the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cups bidding process is closed for the FIFA Ethics Committee,'' the German judge wrote in a statement released by FIFA.

The 2022 World Cup will finally, it seems, be played in Qatar though exactly when is still unclear as FIFA seeks an alternative to the desert heat in June and July.

"FIFA welcomes the fact that a degree of closure has been reached,'' the governing body said in a statement. "As such, FIFA looks forward to continuing the preparations for Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022, which are already well under way.''

Despite finding wrongdoing among the 11 bidding nations, Eckert said the integrity of the votes was not affected.

"In particular, the effects of these occurrences on the bidding process as a whole were far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it,'' he summarised.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter had earlier said that the criticism against Qatar was racist while the 2022 organising committee maintained they had followed the 'highest ethical standards' during the process.

The report did criticise England's bid for the 2018 tournament for "inappropriate requests" from former CONCACAF President Jack Warner, a FIFA powerbroker at the time, in what it said was "an apparent violation of bidding rules".

Meanwhile, a report published by Amnesty International said on Wednesday that 2022 World Cup host nation is lagging behind on addressing concerns about the abuse of migrant workers six months after it laid out plans for labour reforms.

"The legacy of the FIFA 2022 World Cup would be the hundreds of thousands of workers who were exploited to make it happen," the group said in the 12-page report.

In May, Qatari officials announced plans for new legislation that could eventually end the controversial sponsorship system in its current form.