ZURICH: A corruption probe into the bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups will stay secret, FIFA President Sepp Blatter said Friday, rejecting a request from the chief investigator to make his report public.

Blatter said FIFA’s ethics rules state that all such investigations should be confidential, and that no member of his executive committee asked for the report to be published at its meeting on Friday. He also chided ethics prosecutor Michael Garcia for issuing a press release to request that his investigation be published, rather than contacting Blatter personally.

“The FIFA president or secretary general have not had any demands or requests from Mr. Garcia to speak with us,” Blatter said at a news conference. “The only contact that we have had ... was his press releases.”

Garcia issued a statement on Wednesday calling for FIFA’s ruling board to allow “appropriate publication” of his work. FIFA’s ethics code only allows summaries of the actual verdict to be released.

Garcia, a former US Attorney, has given FIFA’s ethics judge Joachim Eckert first-draft reports totaling 430 pages from his team investigating alleged unethical behavior by senior FIFA officials during the bidding campaigns won by Russia and Qatar.

Several FIFA board members who joined since the December 2010 votes have publicly backed Garcia’s push to relax secrecy, with some seeking full disclosure.

“Most of the requests coming for the publication of this report were from people (that) were not there on the second of December when the decision was taken,” Blatter said. “Today there was not any longer any requests from any of these members in the FIFA to publish this report.”

Garcia’s initial reports recommend further action against some voters, according to a FIFA statement released Sept. 5. At a FIFA-hosted conference last week, Garcia talked of building public confidence by announcing detailed charges.

Eckert has set an early-November deadline to finish reading the initial reports, then Garcia can request opening formal cases.

Final verdicts are expected around April next year. Eckert has suggested he will limit sanctions to individuals, and leave Blatter’s board to decide whether to take action against Russia or Qatar.

Blatter has told his executive committee colleagues he plans to run for re-election next year, though he is not yet an official candidate.

The Swiss official says he told them he “will accept, let’s say, demands, pleas” from national federations to seek a fifth mandate.

Blatter says he has not yet submitted formal nomination papers, which must be signed by five of FIFA’s 209 member associations.

That deadline is Jan. 29, four months before election day in Zurich.

Blatter, who turns 79 before the vote in Zurich, says his mission is unfinished.

He dismissed a recent suggestion from potential election opponent Jerome Champagne to have a televised debate

Soccer’s governing body FIFA has agreed to ban the third-party ownership of players, its president Sepp Blatter said on Friday, seven years after first promising to outlaw the practice.

Blatter said a working group would be set up to implement the ban which would come into effect following “a transitional period.”

“We took a firm decision that TPO should be banned but it cannot be banned immediately there will be a transitional period,” Blatter told a news conference following a meeting of the executive committee.

His announcement followed pressure from European soccer’s governing body UEFA, which had said it would ban it unilaterally if FIFA did not act.

Third-party ownership is when the transfer rights of players are wholly or partially owned by the footballer himself or a company, instead of just the player’s club.

It is widespread in Brazil and Argentina, and is also present in some European countries such as Portugal, but banned in others including England, France and Poland.

FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke said the working group would decide how long the transitional period would be and would submit a proposal to the next executive committee meeting in December.

“The ban cannot be implemented immediately and we are discussing the number of transfer windows we have to wait for this ban (to come into affect).