The allegations, that Qatar's bid paid $1.5m (£935,000) to Issa Hayatou, Jacques Anouma and Amos Adamu, to secure their votes, were not published by any newspaper, but the House of Commons select committee for culture, media and sport did, based on a letter from theSunday Times. That meant the allegations of serious corruption, revealed by "a whistleblower who had worked with the Qatar bid", could be reported around the world with the protection of parliamentary privilege.

The whistleblower, publicly identifying herself as Phaedra Almajid, was employed as an international media specialist at Qatar's 2022 bid between May 2009 and March 2010. She now says she entirely fabricated that story of bribes paid by the Qatar bid, and other corruption allegations, because she wanted to "hurt" the bid after they decided to move her from her job. She said she was "furious" at the bid's suggestion that she was not handling the international media competently, and, "acting irrationally", decided to make up the corruption stories "to show them I could control the international media".

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