Fifa probe World Cup 'votes for sale' claims

An investigation is under way into allegations that two Fifa officials offered to sell their votes to one of England's competitors in the race to host the 2018 World Cup.

A Sunday newspaper claimed to have caught Nigerian Amos Adamu, a Fifa executive committee member, on film as he told an undercover reporter he would guarantee his vote in exchange for 500,000.

The newspaper's reporters had posed as lobbyists for an American business consortium which wanted to help secure the World Cup for the US.

The US pulled out of the race on Friday, saying it wanted to focus on bidding for the 2022 tournament. The reporters involved in the story emphasised they had no links to the bid and that the US committee's campaign had been completely above board.

At an initial meeting in London with Adamu, also president of the West African Football Union, he is said to have told the reporters that he wanted money to build four artificial football pitches in his home country.

In sport

• Sepp Blatter promises probe into 'very negative' World Cup vote claims

The newspaper said a second member of the committee, Reynald Temarii, who is president of the Oceania Football Confederation, asked to be paid for his vote as well. In his case, they said he wanted the money to finance a sports academy.

Fifa has asked for all material relating to the allegations.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said: "These are serious allegations. Of course we want all the proceedings in the World Cup bid to be carried out in a way that is ethically correct and that therefore means that everybody can respect the process and respect the result.

"I would call on all nations involved to carry out these proceedings in that way."

England is bidding for the 2018 World Cup against Russia and joint bids from Belgium-Holland and Spain-Portugal.