by Our Sports Desk

FIFA presidential candidate Chung Mong Joon said he will sue Sepp Blatter for embezzlement yesterday for at least $100 million (£65m).

Chung, a former Fifa vice-president and billionaire from South Korea, branded Blatter “a hypocrite and a liar” and has appointed a Swiss lawyer to represent him.

Chung said he is facing suspension from Fifa’s ethics committee for promoting a $777m development fund proposed by South Korea’s 2022 World Cup bid. He said that it was a “travesty of justice” after no investigation was lodged against Uefa president Michel Platini’s support for Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid.

Chung said: “Fifa has become a badge of shame. To call it a mafia is almost insulting to mafia, so blatant and arrogant is its corruption.

“At Fifa money and power have blinded Blatter in the virtues of sportsmanship. Blatter in short is a hypocrite and a liar.”

Chung said Blatter had refused to tell the executive committee what his salary was.

He added: “For Blatter to get paid without ExCo approval is embezzlement. That is why I plan to sue Blatter on his embezzlement in court.”

Chung said he would sue for “at least the $100m” that Fifa had to pay Mastercard in damages after a US court case in 2007.

He pointed out that Chilean Harold Mayne-Nicholls was banned for seven years by Fifa’s ethics committee after asking Qatar for placements for family members while he was in charge of the technical inspectors looking at the World Cup bids. Mayne-Nicholls last year said he wanted to run against Blatter for the presidency.

He said: “Platini voted for Qatar and his son landed a job with a Qatar company as chief executive. The ethics committee did not even start an investigation, this is a travesty of justice.”

Chung also claimed that Platini should be “punished” for revealing he had voted for Qatar because that was against Fifa regulations. Chung refused to reveal where his votes went but denied that he had agreed to — and then back-tracked on — a vote-trading agreement with England.

He said: “Platini should be punished for his violation of Fifa regulations. Maybe in the future Fifa should change the regulations and ask all national associations to disclose their voting. The IOC also has a regulation to make it a secret process — do you think the IOC allows him or her to continue to be an IOC member, I don’t think so. It was a very serious violation of Fifa rules.”