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 summarized.
The corruption case is still open for past and current members of FIFA's ruling board.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter had earlier said that the criticism against Qatar was racist while the 2022 organizing committee maintained they had followed the 'highest ethical standards' during the process.
The report did criticize 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".
Al Jazeera and agencies
13 November
