FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, has denied any connection to an alleged $10m (£6.5m) bribe in comments made at a press conference Saturday morning. Blatter held a press conference in Zurich in which he sought to downplay the US criminal proceedings launched against FIFA officials earlier this week. Responding to questions from reporters, Blatter denied he was the unnamed senior FIFA official who allegedly authorised the payment of a $10m bribe to former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner.
The indictment states that “a highranking FIFA official caused payments… totalling $10 million – to be wired from a FIFA account in Switzerland to a Bank of America correspondent account in New York… controlled by Jack Warner. I don’t go into this allegations. If such a thing is under investigation let it go and definitely that’s not me,” Blatter told the press conference.
“This is a problem I do not enter. We will not go further. The only thing I can say is I have no 10 million dollars. The Americans are making investigations they have right to do so, I have no concerns, I especially have no concerns about my person.”
Blatter, 79, was re-elected for his fifth term as president at a FIFA Congress in Zurich on Friday.
The FIFA president has confirmed there will be no changes to the upcoming World Cup tournaments in relation to qualification and allocation of regional places. Speaking a day after he was reelected for a fifth term at the helm of football’s world governing body, the 79-year-old insisted the sport’s global showpiece would not be altered.
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