The battle for the FIFA presidency was thrown further into turmoil yesterday as football’s governing body announced they have opened a probe for alleged corruption against president Sepp Blatter.

Blatter will appear before FIFA’s ethics committee tomorrow after claims he knew about alleged cash payments at the centre of an investigation targeting his election rival Mohamed Bin Hammam.

Bin Hammam had demanded the corruption investigation be widened to include Blatter on Thursday as the two men prepare to contest a June 1 election for control of world football.

The announcement came two days after Bin Hammam, FIFA vice-president Jack Warner and two Caribbean Football Union officials were summoned to the ethics committee to answer corruption allegations.

Bin Hammam and Warner were targeted after Chuck Blazer, general secretary of regional footballing body CONCACAF, reported possible misdeeds during a May 10 and 11 meeting in Trinidad.

British media reports said Bin Hammam and Warner are accused of offering $40,000 cash gifts to national associations at the Trinidad conference in return for their votes in next week’s presidential election.

FIFA’s statement yesterday said Blatter had been summoned to appear before the ethics committee to answer claims that Warner had told him in advance of alleged payments made at the meeting.

Blatter has denied suggestions from Bin Hammam that he had orchestrated the charges against the man seeking to unseat him, dismissing them as “ludicrous”.

“I take no joy to see men who stood by my side for some two decades, suffer through public humiliation without having been convicted of any wrongdoing,” Blatter wrote in his column on the respected InsideWorldFootball blog.

“To now assume that the present ordeal of my opponent were to fill me with some sort of perverse satisfaction or that this entire matter was somehow masterminded by me is ludicrous and completely reprehensible.”