Swiss prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation against Sepp Blatter, the head of football's world governing body Fifa.
The attorney general's office said
he was suspected of criminal mismanagement or misappropriation over a
TV rights deal and of a "disloyal payment" to European football chief
Michel Platini.
Mr Blatter was being questioned, and his office was searched, it added.
Fifa said it was co-operating with the investigation.
Mr Blatter, 79, has run Fifa since 1998 and has always denied any wrongdoing.
For
his part, Mr Platini issued a statement on Friday evening, saying the
money he received from Mr Blatter "relates to work which I carried out
under a contract with Fifa" and he had clarified matters with the
authorities.
'Disloyal payment'
The
Swiss attorney general's office said the investigation surrounds a TV rights deal Mr Blatter signed with former Caribbean football chief
Jack Warner in 2005.
"Swiss
criminal proceedings against the president of Fifa, Mr Joseph Blatter,
have been opened... on suspicion of criminal mismanagement... and -
alternatively - misappropriation," it said.
Mr
Blatter is also suspected of making a "disloyal payment" of two million
Swiss francs ($2m; £1.3m) in 2011 to Mr Platini, the statement said.
It
said the payment was "at the expense of Fifa, which was allegedly made
for work performed between January 1999 and June 2002".
Mr Blatter is due to step down in February and Mr Platini is widely expected to replace him.
Analysis by BBC sports editor Dan Roan
Ever
since May, when the arrest of senior Fifa officials in dawn raids in
Zurich plunged world football's governing body into crisis, the sport
has wondered whether the scandal would lead directly to President Sepp
Blatter.
Today - finally - it did. On the one hand, perhaps it should come as no surprise.
After
all, Mr Blatter has been at the helm of Fifa for 17 years. He's become
symbolic of the many corruption allegations that have blighted the body
and some thought it a matter of time until investigations by the FBI and
Swiss criminal authorities would implicate him.
In fact, such was the perceived threat facing Mr Blatter that his lawyers advised him not to travel abroad.
However, this is still a stunning development, with criminal proceedings opened against the man who still runs world football.
Although
Mr Blatter announced he was stepping down back in June, he decided to
hang on as president until February in a bid to influence the choice of
his successor and reforms. That now seems highly unlikely, with calls
for him to resign immediately bound to intensify.
Uefa supremo
Michel Platini - the favourite to replace Blatter - has also been
dragged into the scandal, and many will argue that he cannot now be the
answer to the organisation's battered credibility.
In fact, critics will insist that so tarnished has Fifa become, the time has come for it to be run by an external company.
And
inevitably this latest development will raise more questions over the
process that led to Russia and Qatar becoming hosts of the World Cup.
Sport's biggest ever scandal has just got bigger.
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In May, Swiss authorities arrested seven Fifa
officials in Zurich at the request of the US. One, Fifa Vice-President
Jeffrey Webb, has already been extradited.
The US then unveiled indictments against seven other people in their corruption case.
Nine
of those accused were high-ranking current or former Fifa officials.
They include Jack Warner who is is accused of accepting millions of
dollars in bribes and is currently fighting extradition from Trinidad.
The Swiss opened their own investigation into Fifa hours after the initial arrests.
The
BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the timing of the announcement of
the investigation into Sepp Blatter was no accident, coming as it did
while the world's media were gathered in Zurich for a Fifa news
conference.
She says that ever since the first arrests in May, the
Swiss attorney general's office has told her it was serious about
investigating Fifa, and proving to a sceptical world that Switzerland
can get tough on financial corruption.
Fifa owns the TV rights to the World Cup and sells them to regional federations which then sell them on to broadcasters.
Mr
Blatter's lawyer, Richard Cullen, said he was confident the inquiry
would clear Mr Blatter of any wrongdoing regarding the contract with
Jack Warner.
"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," he said.
Michel Platini, right, is widely tipped to succeed Sepp Blatter
Mr Blatter won a fifth consecutive Fifa presidential
election on 29 May but, following claims of corruption, announced his
decision to step down on 2 June. He is due to finish his term at a Fifa
extraordinary congress on 26 February.
Fifa cancelled its news conference on Friday only minutes before it was due to start.
Mr
Blatter would have been speaking in public for the first time since
general secretary Jerome Valcke was suspended last week amid allegations
regarding ticket sales at the 2014 World Cup.
Newspaper reports implicated Mr Valcke, 54, in a scheme to sell tickets for above face value.
Sepp Blatter's scheduled news conference was unexpectedly cancelled
Mr Valcke, who describes the allegations as "fabricated", has been released from his duties pending an investigation.
Fifa also announced earlier that it had moved its next executive committee meeting from Tokyo to Zurich.
Correspondents
say that, although Mr Blatter has not been indicted, he might be more
vulnerable to an extradition request outside of Switzerland.
