Sepp Blatter provisionally suspended for 90 days by FIFA Ethics Committee

Blatter announced that he was stepping down as FIFA President back in June

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has been provisionally suspended by members of FIFA's ethics committee for a period of 90 days after being accused of signing a contract "unfavourable" to football's governing body and making a "disloyal payment" to UEFA president Michel Platini. In light of the above charges, Blatter has “violated his fiduciary duties and acted against the interest of FIFA ".

Blatter who assumed office as the FIFA president in June,1988 has been questioned, and has had his office searched as a consequence of the criminal proceedings initiated against him.

A final decision is awaited on the matter by Friday as revealed by Hans-Joachim Eckhert, the head of FIFA 's ethics adjudicatory chamber. The ethics committee had been meeting in Zurich since Monday and on Wednesday, the FIFA President told a German magazine that he was being "condemned without there being any evidence for wrongdoing".

The investigation is centred on allegations believed to be about a 2005 TV rights deal between FIFA and Jack Warner, the former president of CONCACAF, the governing body of football in North and Central America and the Caribbean. The contract in mention allegedly resulted in a multi-million pound profit for Mr Warner's own company, as reported in an investigation by a Swiss broadcaster earlier this month. FIFA owns the TV rights to the World Cup and other trademarked competitions and sells them to regional federations which then sell them on to broadcasters.

Richard Cullen, Sepp Blatters’s lawyer said he was confident the inquiry would clear Mr Blatter’s name and issued the following statement - "We are confident that when the Swiss authorities have a chance to review the documents and the evidence, they will see that the contract was properly prepared and negotiated by the appropriate staff members of FIFA who were routinely responsible for such contracts, and certainly no mismanagement occurred" .

The investigation is also examining a payment of two million Swiss francs (£1.35m) to Michel Platini in 2011 for working with Blatter. The Frenchman claims it was "valid compensation" for work carried out more than nine years previously.

Ex- Juventus legend Platini has provided information to the criminal investigation as a witness. No decision has been made to suspend Platini and Swiss prosecutors say he is being treated as "in between a witness and an accused person" as the investigation continues.

Blatter announced that he was stepping down as FIFA President back in June but has decided to remain on the throne until February in a bid to influence the choice of his successor and reforms. Those events seem highly unlikely now, with calls for him to resign immediately bound to intensify.

UEFA supremo Michel Platini was favoured to replace Blatter, but with his name dragged into the scandal, many will argue that he cannot now be the answer to the organisation's battered credibility.

The latest development came hours after former FIFA vice-president Chung Mong-joon who is also under investigation by FIFA's ethics committee, accused Blatter of being "a hypocrite and a liar" and told BBC Sport that his campaign to succeed Blatter was being "smeared".

He plans to sue Mr Blatter for embezzlement in court as he believes the 79 year old head is the root of all evil in football. "Fifa has become a badge of shame. To call it a mafia is almost insulting to mafia, so blatant and arrogant is its corruption.”, said Chung Mong- joon in his speech at the Leaders in Sport Conference at London.