FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke banned by FIFA.

FIFA, the World Football governing body has banned its former secretary general Jerome Valcke from all football-related activities for 12 years.The 55-year-old Valcke has also been fined 100,000 Swiss francs (£70,800), after being found guilty of several acts of misconduct ranging from racketeering, ticket price hikes and inflated expense accounts.

The Frenchman had been suspended since incriminatory evidence against him came to light last September, with his eventual sack confirmed in January after an indictment by the Fifa Independent Ethics committee headed by Domenico Scala.

A Fifa statement said: “Amongst other things, the adjudicatory chamber found that a sports marketing firm had gained an undue advantage from the selling of World Cup tickets.

“In this respect, not only did Mr Valcke do nothing to stop these activities, he even encouraged the persons responsible to do so.

“By travelling at Fifa’s expense purely for sightseeing reasons, as well as repeatedly choosing private flights for his trips over commercial flights without any business rationale for doing so, Mr Valcke gained an advantage for himself and relatives.

“In doing so, Mr Valcke acted against Fifa’s best interests and caused considerable financial damage to Fifa.

“Concerning the issue of TV and media rights for the Caribbean, it was found that Mr Valcke attempted to grant the TV and media rights for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to a third party for a fee far below their actual market value and had taken concrete preparatory action in this regard.

“Furthermore, it was found that Mr Valcke deliberately tried to obstruct the ongoing proceedings against him by attempting to delete or deleting several files and folders relevant to the investigation, despite being aware of his duty to preserve all data and to collaborate in order to establish the facts of the case.”