SWISS authorities have received more than 100 reports of suspicious financial activity linked to FIFA’s decisions to let Russia and Qatar host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments, the Swiss attorney general’s office said Saturday.

    Switzerland’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG) is investigating corruption at Zurich-based FIFA and its decisions on who would stage the World Cup. Both Russia and Qatar have previously denied wrongdoing.

    “I can confirm that the OAG received so far 103 suspicious financial activity reports regarding the allocation of the Football World Cup 2018 and 2022,” an OAG spokesman said in an email.

    In July, the OAG said it had received 81 reports of suspicious financial activity for its investigation.

    Meanwhile, outgoing president Sepp Blatter said Saturday that FIFA can never be dominated by one continent.

    Without going into details or naming anyone, Blatter said that in the past one continental federation had tried to exert dominance over the others, using proposed reforms as an attempt to grab the presidency.

    That remark may have referred to proposals drafted by European soccer’s ruling body UEFA in the mid-1990s for a radical reform of FIFA, which at the time was run by Brazilian Joao Havelange who had been in charge since 1974.

    Amid bitter criticism of Havelange, UEFA produced documents known as Vision 1 and Vision 2 with proposals that included rotating FIFA’s presidency. Blatter’s comments came amid an increasing rift between FIFA and UEFA.

    Almost all of Europe’s national associations voted against the Swiss when he was re-elected for a fifth term at the FIFA Congress on May 29.

    He won the election against Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein with the backing of votes from Africa, Asia and Oceania.

    European media have been critical of the system where each of FIFA’s 209 national associations holds one vote.

    In June, German federation president Wolfgang Niersbach proposed that votes should be weighted, based on “size and sporting relevance of the federations.”

    One of Blatter’s achievements has been the creation of a match calendar that guarantees a set number of dates for international games each year. The calendar ended a tug-of-war between European clubs and South American and African national teams over who got priority when there was a clash of dates.(SD-Agencies)