Fifa’s 2014 goodie bag scandal: 48 luxury watches to be donated to charity....• £16,344 watches were handed out as gifts to Fifa officials in Brazil • Fifa ethics committee gives them to global NGO streetfootballworld

Fifa’s ethics committee has handed over 48 luxury watches given to football officials in 2014 to charity. Photograph: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

The luxury Parmigiani watches famously handed out in goodie bags to Fifa executives last year have been donated by Fifa’s ethics committee to charity.

The £16,344 watches, given as gifts to football officials by Brazil’s FA during a Fifa Congress in São Paulo that was dominated by corruption allegations and protests, have all now been handed to the global NGO streetfootballworld.

Fifa executive says £16,000 watch gift was ‘the most poisonous present’ ever

Sixty-five watches were reportedly distributed last year to the 28 officials on Fifa’s ruling executive committee, to a representative from each of the 32 member associations and to representatives from South America’s governing body.

However, the ethics committee, which said last year it would not open formal proceedings against officials if they handed the watches over, said it had found only 48 were actually distributed, all of which have now been returned.

Streetfootballworld will now invest proceeds from the sale of the watches into grassroots football projects in Brazil.

One of the original recipients, the FA chairman Greg Dyke, initially refused to hand his watch back, having promised to donate it to the FA’s official charity partner, Breast Cancer Care, for auction. But, with the threat of sanctions if he did not return the watch to Fifa, he did surrender it to the ethics committee in April.

Dyke said at the time he had no idea the watch was worth so much. “It was the fourth watch I’ve had since I started doing this job. Everywhere you go you get these watches. I wouldn’t know a £16,000 watch if my life depended on it. No one should give you a £16,000 watch without telling you what it’s worth.

“The fact that gifts of great value are being handed out randomly and often with the recipient unaware shows up a culture in need of change.”

Fifa’s code of ethics says football officials should not accept gifts of more than “symbolic or trivial value” and that “if in doubt, gifts shall not be offered or accepted”. It also says that ignorance is no defence and that officials “are expected to be aware of the importance of their duties and concomitant obligations and responsibilities”.

Guardian