Two suspected touts have been arrested while selling World Cup tickets inside FIFA’s official hotel in Rio de Janeiro and football’s governing body said it would take legal action against whoever passed the tickets to them.

“For me it is amazing to see touts coming to the official FIFA hotel, sitting in between FIFA people and selling tickets without any problem,” FIFA marketing director Thierry Weil told reporters yesterday.

The two arrests were made by Brazilian police on Tuesday and one of the people was a French speaker, he said. About 50 tickets were confiscated as a result of the arrests, 10 of which were originally issued to national football associations which are members of FIFA, Weil said.

He declined to identify any member association or commercial partner of FIFA whose allocated tickets ended up in the hands of the touts but said FIFA was trying to trace the individuals who illegally re-sold them.

“We are going down to the individual who has actually received the ticket,” he said.

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