Swiss police have arrested some of the most powerful figures in global soccer, announcing a criminal investigation into the awarding of the next two World Cups and plunging the world’s most popular sport into turmoil.

In addition to the Swiss criminal probe, nine football officials and five sports media and promotions executives face extradition to the United States on corruption charges involving more than $150 million in bribes, US authorities said.

Those arrested did not include Sepp Blatter, the Swiss head of FIFA, but included several executives just below him in the hierarchy of the wealthiest and most powerful sports body on Earth.

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Of the 14 indicted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), seven officials of soccer’s governing body FIFA, including vice president Jeffrey Webb, were arrested in Zurich.

Four people and two corporate defendants had already pleaded guilty to various charges, the department said.

The Miami, Florida headquarters of CONCACAF, the soccer federation that governs North America, Central America and the Caribbean, were being searched on Wednesday, the DoJ said.

“As charged in the indictment, the defendants fostered a culture of corruption and greed that created an uneven playing field for the biggest sport in the world,” FBI director James Comey said.

“Undisclosed and illegal payments, kickbacks and bribes became a way of doing business at FIFA.”

The arrests by plain-clothes Swiss police were made at dawn at a plush Zurich hotel where FIFA officials were staying ahead of a vote this week that was expected to anoint Blatter for a fifth term at the helm.

Blatter to stay at helm, World Cups to go ahead: FIFA

FIFA said the arrests were a “difficult moment” but Blatter would not step down and upcoming World Cups would go ahead as planned.

Blatter is “relaxed” about the fallout from the controversy, his spokesman Walter de Gregorio told a press conference at FIFA headquarters.

“The general secretary and the president are not involved in this,” he said, referring to Blatter and FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke.

FIFA communications director Walter De Gregorio insisted FIFA wanted the full truth to come out. Photo: Getty

“He isn’t dancing in his office – [not] this kind of relaxing. He is very very calm, he sees what happens. He is fully cooperative with everybody.”

De Gregorio insisted FIFA wanted the full truth to come out and that the US and Swiss investigations would help the body in its cleanup.

He said FIFA’s congress would start as scheduled on Thursday and that the vote for the body’s president would be held on Friday.

De Gregorio said that for the moment there was no plan to review holding the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar respectively.

Separate from the US investigation, Swiss prosecutors said they had opened their own criminal proceedings against unidentified individuals on suspicion of mismanagement and money laundering related to the awarding of the rights to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Data and documents were seized from computers at FIFA’s Zurich headquarters, the Swiss prosecutors said.

The US DoJ named those arrested in its case as: Webb, Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, FIFA vice-president Eugenio Figueredo, Rafael Esquivel and Jose Maria Marin.

The DoJ said the defendants included US and South American sports marketing executives alleged to have paid and agreed to pay “well over $150 million in bribes and kickbacks to obtain lucrative media and marketing rights to international soccer tournaments”.

“The indictment alleges corruption that is rampant, systemic and deep-rooted both abroad and here in the United States,” US attorney-general Loretta Lynch said in a statement.

“It spans at least two generations of soccer officials who, as alleged, have abused their positions of trust to acquire millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks.”

‘A sad day for football’, Jordan’s Prince Ali says

The international governing body of football collects billions of dollars in revenue, mostly from sponsorship and television rights for World Cups.

It has persistently been dogged by reports of corruption which it says it investigates itself, but until now it has escaped major criminal cases in any country.

In particular, the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a tiny desert country with no domestic tradition of soccer, was heavily criticised by soccer officials in Western countries.

Early morning assignment for the @nytimes in Zurich pic.twitter.com/tcseCUDNb0

— Mora (@moraphoto) May 27, 2015

FIFA was forced to acknowledge that it was too hot to play soccer there in the summer when the cup is traditionally held, forcing schedules around the globe to be rewritten to move the cup.

Qatar’s stock market fell sharply as news of the Swiss investigation emerged. A Russian official said his country would still host the 2018 World Cup.

Three years ago FIFA hired a former US prosecutor to examine allegations of bribery over the awarding of the World Cups to Qatar and Russia, but last year it refused to publish his report, releasing only a summary in which it said there were no major irregularities.

The investigator quit, saying his report had been mischaracterised.

Most of the arrested officials are in Switzerland for the FIFA Congress, where Blatter faces a challenge from Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein in an election on Friday to lead the organisation.

Other potential challengers to Blatter have all dropped out the race.

Prince Ali, who has promised to clean up FIFA if elected to the top job, called it “a sad day for football”.