Sepp Blatter denies authorising $10m payment to Jack Warner

Fifa president Sepp Blatter has denied any connection to an alleged $10m (£6.5m) bribe in comments made at a press conference this morning (30 May).

The head of football's world governing body 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 disgraced former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner.

The indictment states that "a high-ranking 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 (29 May).

On Wednesday, US prosecutors indicted 14 Fifa officials and associates, arresting seven of them in a dawn raid at a luxury hotel in Zurich. They stand accused of bribery, racketeering and money laundering involving tens of millions of pounds.

Speaking to the press on Saturday, Blatter suggested that the anti-corruption arrests were politically motivated, citing that the US had lost the bidding for the 2022 World Cup to Qatar and that England – another critic of Blatter's regime – had lost the 2018 World Cup.

He also said that the US was the "number one sponsor" of Jordan, the home country of the defeated challenger for the Fifa presidency, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein.