"I have applied that open-door policy consistently from Day 1 and many people have taken advantage of it, both on the public side and inside football," he said. "You can really go where the cases take you."
Though the code prevents him from discussing ongoing work, Garcia said he has match-fixing allegations "on the radar screen," and suggested that FIFA's continental confederations—which closely guard their autonomy and privileges—could be in his sights.
Still, Garcia received flak that, by taking over the Asian body's bin Hammam probe, his independence was compromised by serving the FIFA president's vested interests. Garcia's case report detailing "repeated" financial conflicts of interest prompted bin Hammam to resign from soccer and triggered a life ban.
"That case speaks for itself. There is public record information on how it was resolved," Garcia said. "That investigation was done…completely consistently with what I consider my independent jurisdiction and decision-making authority. There was never an issue to me any other way."
Garcia described it as "unfortunate" if one high-profile case made people think "nothing else is going on" in his FIFA work.
Building public trust in the integrity of FIFA's judicial process is a theme stressed by Garcia, who praised his "top-notch" colleagues, also appointed by FIFA to ensure independent oversight: ethics court judge Joachim Eckert of Germany and compliance panel chairman Domenico Scala of Switzerland.
"I think if you look at the future of this process and Scala's work, that is the good news," Garcia said. "To me, instilling confidence in the new code, and the new process for enforcing the code, is more important than any case that either had been done, or will be done."
Here, Garcia sees comparisons in working with "Wall Street" and "FIFA"—catch-all terms for what frustrates many people about perceived elite interests in the economy or soccer.
"I approach those two the same way: Are there bad actors? What are they doing? And how do you stop that and send a message?" he said.
Garcia recalled that, while his past decisions as a prosecutor might have been criticized by The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, commentators respected the integrity of his office.
