ZURICH - FIFA president Sepp Blatter and its general secretary Jerome Valcke are not implicated in a corruption probe underway into the vote for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, the organisation's spokesman said on Wednesday.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter (right) and its general secretary Jerome Valcke are not implicated in a corruption probe underway into the vote for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, a FIFA spokesman says
"The general secretary and the president are not involved in this," spokesman Walter De Gregoria told a hastily-arranged press conference.
He also said that the FIFA Congress to vote for who would be its president for the next four years would go ahead as planned in Zurich on Friday.
The announcements followed the dawn arrests of several top football officials in a Zurich hotel and a Swiss police raid on FIFA headquarters as part of a probe into the votes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup which went respectively to Russia and Qatar.
The US Justice Department, meanwhile, unsealed an indictment against nine FIFA officials and five executives, charging them with conspiracy and corruption over a 24-year span.
The Department of Justice said it unsealed the indictment as officials raided the CONCACAF soccer organization headquarters in Miami as part of the case.
"It spans at least two generations of soccer officials who, as alleged, have abused their positions of trust to acquire millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in the Justice Department statement about the charges.