Andrew Warshaw: FIFA in the dock

There have been claims and counter-claims, barbs and backbiting. This week's FIFA presidential contest between Sepp Blatter and his challenger Mohamed bin Hammam was always going be an unsavoury affair.

But no-one, least of all the two candidates, could have imagined that, just days before the vote in Zurich, both would become embroiled in the most shameful bribery scandal ever to strike at the heart of football's world governing body.

This evening FIFA's ethics committee, with the eyes of the world upon them, will announce whether Blatter, bin Hammam and FIFA vice-president Jack Warner - the three main men in the dock - should be suspended for their roles in a bribes-for-votes sensation that has rocked FIFA, its image already hugely tainted by a spate of other recent misdemeanours.

The outcome, after a chain of events that defies belief even given FIFA's reputation for sleaze, will have a crucial impact on whether Wednesday's election, already marred by a series of tit-for-tat spats, takes place at all.

Bin Hammam, head of the Asian Football Confederation, and Warner, FIFA's senior vice-president and head of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), had already been summoned to today's hearing for their alleged roles in the scandal that is understood to involve bundles of several thousand dollars offered to Caribbean member nations.

The alleged bribery took place on 10-11 May at a Caribbean Football Union (CFU) meeting arranged for Bin Hammam's election campaign by Warner in the latter's native Trinidad. Evidence collated by a US law firm commissioned by CONCACAF general secretary and FIFA executive committee member Chuck Blazer is said to include signed affidavits, text messages, photographs and e-mail conversations, in a comprehensive dossier relating to "football development" payments of $40,000 (24,000) to several CFU member federations. Both bin Hammam and Warner vehemently deny any wrongdoing but are on dangerous ground, territory in fact where FIFA has never gone before. Because, unlike in previous allegations of corruption, the two FIFA powerbrokers have been cited not by newspapers or British MPs but by one of their own colleagues within the inner sanctum, the burly figure of Blazer who would not have gone down this route had he not been sure of his facts.

Even Blazer, however, has been taken aback by the latest remarkable twist. Until a few days ago, the ethics committee were simply dealing with the conduct of bin Hammam, Warner and two junior CFU officials who are also under investigation.Then came the most unexpected of developments as Blatter himself was dragged into the affair.

The most powerful man in world football was also ordered to appear before his own ethics committee following suggestions by bin Hammam that Blatter knew about the alleged cash inducements in advance yet stayed silent.

The ethics committee is bound by its rules to investigate any complaint by an executive committee member and bin Hammam has been quick to exploit this, believing that a campaign has been orchestrated against him by Blatter's supporters in order to get him out of the presidential race and give the 75-year-old Swiss a free run for another four years.

Bin Hammam freely admits he paid travel and accommodation costs for the Caribbean delegates, as well as administrative costs for the meeting. But in a statement released to the media, he said he had requested Blatter be added to the probe because of suggestions that the FIFA president "was informed of, and did not oppose" the alleged payments.

"If there is even the slightest justice in the world, these allegations will vanish in the wind," Bin Hammam said.

"The timing of the accusations so close to the election of FIFA president on June 1, 2011, suggests that they are part of a plan to damage Bin Hammam and force him to withdraw as a candidate for the FIFA presidency," the statement said.

Nonsense, says Blatter, who dropped plans to attend last night's Champions League final to concentrate on the hearing. In his latest column for the insideworldfootball website, the FIFA president says claims that the entire matter was somehow masterminded by him were "ludicrous and completely reprehensible".

Sources have told Scotland on Sunday he may be right and that yanking Blatter into the investigation was simply a last-ditch move by Bin Hammam to save face and cling on to his bid for the presidency.

It all amounts to the biggest crisis in FIFA's history, with two other corruption cases still pending, one involving four executive committee members said to have asked for sweeteners to vote for England's 2018 World Cup bid, the other relating to alleged bribes paid to two delegates to vote for Qatar 2022. Again, all those accused deny any wrongdoing.