FIfa executives arrested in US corruption investigation

He said after Suarez was handed his ban.

“When a little more time has passed we are going to look at how, politically, this punishment can be softened a little.”

07.46

More names have emerged of who has been arrested. The New York Times says that aside from Jeffrey Webb, Eugenio Figueredo and Jack Warner, Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Rafael Esquivel, José Maria Marin and Nicolás Leoz are also implicated.

Charges are also expected against sports-marketing executives Alejandro Burzaco, Aaron Davidson,Hugo Jinkis and Mariano Jinkis.

It is also claimed that US authorities have also charged José Margulies as an intermediary who facilitated illegal payments.

^{What now for Fifa following latest investigation?}

07.38

Diego Maradona wrote a column in the Telegraph only three days of how Fifa is a playground for the corrupt.

All these corruption investigations are bleeding the life out of Fifa, and international football is drowning in a sea of contempt. Few sports in history have suffered the bad press football has faced in recent years and much of that press is owed to Blatter.

Key sponsors like Continental, Castrol and Johnson & Johnson are running away from Fifa. The Council of Europe has condemned Blatter’s handling of the collapse of ISL and over $100 million in losses. The FBI is looking at the handling of the US bid for 2022. There have been hundreds of media articles on massive financial losses, mismanagement and bribery.

We need young and creative leadership at Fifa – the kind of leadership that is inclusive and open to new ideas. We need a football culture, not a mafia culture.

Why are we all just passively accepting this corruption? Enough is enough. We want our game back.

07.30

Images of the plain-clothes Swiss police raiding the hotel have emerged on social media. Some of the arrests were even captured on camera – although those members have had their identities covered up – by hotel sheets.

07.22

The Telegraph’s own investigation into corruption into the bidding process for the 2022 Qatar World Cup discovered Jack Warner and his family were paid almost £1.2m from a Qatari firm close to the country’s successful bid for the prestigious competition.

Here’s how we broke that story back in March:

A senior Fifa official and his family were paid almost $2 million (£1.2m) from a Qatari firm linked to the country’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup, The Telegraph can disclose.

Jack Warner, the former vice-president of Fifa, appears to have been personally paid $1.2 million (£720,000) from a company controlled by a former Qatari football official shortly after the decision to award the country the tournament.

Payments totalling almost $750,000 (£450,000) were made to Mr Warner’s sons, documents show. A further $400,000 (£240,000) was paid to one of his employees.

It is understood that the FBI is now investigating Trinidad-based Mr Warner and his alleged links to the Qatari bid, and that the former Fifa official’s eldest son, who lives in Miami, has been helping the inquiry as a co-operating witness.

07.13

Our sports news correspondent Ben Rumsby is in Zurich and has been following the build up to the presidential elections. He has this update.

 I am told six people were seized overnight. One of them is believed to be Fifa vice-president Jeffrey Webb, a man heavily tipped eventually to replace Sepp Blatter as president and even anointed as a potential successor by the Swiss.

I spoke to Webb along with a handful of other reporters for several minutes yesterday afternoon after Concacaf held a meeting at the luxury Renaissance Hotel in Zurich. He was relaxed and genial, showing no sign he knew what might be coming.

^{Fifa vice-president Jeffrey Webb is said to have been arrested as part of the investigation}

07.05

It’s unclear at this stage where this leaves Friday’s presidential elections and what implications this could have on the future of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar.

Sepp Blatter was due to address the media in a few hours time ahead of the elections but whether that now goes ahead remains up in the air.

06.55

This is how the New York Times reported the arrests which includes details of another member alleged to have been caught up in the case.

The arrests were carried out peacefully, with at least two men being ushered out of the hotel without handcuffs. One agent carried what appeared to be evidence bags containing medication and money. One Fifa official, Eduardo Li of Costa Rica, was led by the authorities from his room to a side-door exit of the hotel. He was allowed to bring his luggage, which was adorned with Fifa logos.

06.45

The New York Times have named two current officials and one former member who have been arrested in the corruption investigation.

They are vice president of the executive committeeJeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands, Uruguay’sEugenio Figueredo, who is also an executive committee vice president and until recently was the president of South America’s football association andJack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, a former member of the executive committee who has been accused of numerous ethical violations.

06.35

Morning all and welcome to rolling updates on the breaking news this morning that Swiss police havearrested several senior Fifa executives in an early-morning raid launched at the request of the US government, which intends to charge the football officials with corruption.

Police launched the extraordinary operation at the five-star Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich to arrest the Fifa officals and extradite them to the US to face criminal charges.

Early on Wednesday morning, Swiss officers went room to room to find their targets, the New York Times website reported.

Members of football’s governing body were meeting at the hotel to elect a new president, a process that takes place every four years.

US media reported that up to 14 executives could be arrested as part of the FBI investigation, which has been running since 2011. The charges against them include fraud, racketeering and money laundering and relate to World Cup bids as well as marketing and broadcast deals.

Officials said Fifa’s powerful and secretive executive committee was targeted by the US investigation.

“We’re struck by just how long this went on for and how it touched nearly every part of what FIFA did,” a law enforcement official told the New York Times. “It just seemed to permeate every element of the federation and was just their way of doing business. It seems like this corruption was institutionalised.”

Fifa has been plagued by accusations of bribery for decades.

The arrests are a blow for Sepp Blatter, the current president who was expected to stand for re-election on Friday.

Blatter is not among those being charged, officials told CNN. However, officials seen as close to him are among those who will face charges, they said.

The raids come amid rising anger that the Zurich-based football body hasn’t done enough to curb a culture of wrongdoing amid a constant stream of corruption allegations that reached their peak with the awarding of the next two World Cups to Russia and Qatar.