U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch hopes Qatar will cooperate with the World Cup bidding investigation, and says the Gulf nation being a key ally in the fight against Islamic State militants is irrelevant in considering pursuing a corruption case.
The United States is working closely on the FIFA investigation with Swiss authorities, whose case started by probing the dual votes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups five years ago.
At a briefing in London, Lynch says "Qatar's role in [the investigation] would hopefully be cooperative."
While Qatar hosts warplanes participating in the U.S.-led campaign targeting the Islamic State group, Lynch says if "we were to discover a problem or corruption or a violation of law that led to a U.