Over the course of 430 pages, the secret report provides provocative glimpses of unmistakably questionable behavior by some of world soccer’s top officials, as well as others eager to meet their every demand. Huge amounts of money ending up in strange places. High-ranking executives behaving shadily, petulantly and, at times, perhaps illegally. Rules broken, slyly circumvented or simply bent beyond their intent.

The document, known as the Garcia report in tribute to the American who compiled it, but kept secret by FIFA’s ethics committee for more than two years, was surprisingly published on Tuesday by FIFA itself. For the first time, the release confirmed, and in some cases revealed, long-sought details of an investigation into the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. FIFA, the sport’s global governing body, released the report, it said, “for the sake of transparency” — though it notably did so only after a German newspaper revealed on Monday that it had obtained a copy and planned to gradually reveal its unsavory details.

The report was submitted in 2014 by Michael J. Garcia, a former United States attorney who had served as FIFA’s chief ethics investigator, and contained the findings of a monthslong examination he had conducted into the vote in December 2010 — widely reported to have been tainted by corruption — that awarded the 2018 tournament to Russia and the 2022 event to Qatar.

What the Garcia report did not have, in the end, was any hard evidence that the committees for Russia and Qatar had used bribes to secure the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, any smoking gun that might have compelled FIFA to consider moving either of the events, or reopening the bidding for them.