ESPNSTAR.com columnist Jesse Fink has called on FIFA to publicly release the documents that will either incriminate or clear the name of committee member Worawi Makudi.

So December 1 has come and gone, the deadline from FIFA for South-East Asia's sole executive committee member Worawi Makudi to pass on new documents that will clear up this unfortunate business of his name appearing on title-deed documents for land developed with almost a million dollars of FIFA grants.

The same land, of course, was supposed to have been donated to the Thai Football Association.

Very unfortunate. But Thai FA president Makudi, one of Asian football's heaviest hitters, thinks it's all a misunderstanding and that he will be cleared.

Last month he said he had a "letter of intent" to donate the land and this was legal authority enough to claim he had transferred ownership.

How a Bangkok court sees that legally is one thing. How it should be seen morally and ethically by FIFA is quite another.

Richard Conway of the BBC, who has been following the case closely, tweeted this week that FIFA investigators had confirmed to the Beeb "for the time being, no [ethics] case has been opened".

Even though the cache of documents (in Thai and English) that landed Makudi in hot water in the first place have been with FIFA since October, released to head of security Chris Eaton at the behest of director of legal affairs Marco Villiger.

We'll just have to wait and see, then.

But the most important question that needs to be asked of FIFA before any ethics committee investigation is announced or even if Makudi is found to have no case to answer is this: Will the documents be made available to the public?

After all, historically FIFA's assurances regarding the integrity of its executive committee members have counted for nothing.

Its much-maligned ethics committee features suckholes of the ilk of Australia's Les Murray, who this week told a Chartered Secretaries Australia conference on the topic of "Managing Sports Governance" that Sepp Blatter, under whose leadership FIFA has become an international pariah, "owes nobody nothing" and was the right man to lead the organisation.

Transparency remains a vexed issue at FIFA.

Already watchdog group Transparency International has declined an invitation from FIFA to take a seat on its new Independent Governance Committee after it was revealed its head, Mark Pieth, was being paid directly by FIFA and the committee would not be looking into the organisation's past. An absurd proposition effectively tantamount to a war crimes tribunal at The Hague deciding not to investigate war crimes.

TI charged that Pieth, a criminal law professor at Basel University, was not truly independent and the terms of reference were a joke.

Now Pieth has done a total backflip and says looking into the past is "necessary" and he has "absolutely no objection to an investigation".

Great. So it would stand to reason, then, that FIFA's new spirit of openness and accountability is extended to the Makudi investigation.

Or you would think. Watch this space.