Walter De Gregorio
Walter De Gregorio, FIFA Director of Communications and Public Affairs addresses a news conference at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland,Reuters

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) have said that their current president Sepp Blatter and general secretary Jerome Valcke are not involved in any wrongdoing. This follows the recent arrests of several high profile officials of the world football governing body in Switzerland.

There were speculations that 79-year-old Blatter was also involved in corruption. 

"Let me say that the general secretary (Jerome Valcke) and the president are not involved," Walter De Gregorio, spokesman for the world football governing committee, told a press conference, according to Sky Sports.

In a surprise move on Wednesday morning, Swiss authorities arrested seven senior Fifa officials –Jeffrey Webb, Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Eugenio Figueredo, Rafael Esquivel and José Maria Marin – on the request of US Department of Justice.

These men, along with two more Fifa officials – Nicolás Leoz and Jack Warner – and four corporate executives – Alejandro Burzaco, Aaron Davidson, Hugo Jinkis and Mariano Jinkis – are facing alleged corruption charges involving more than $100 million in bribes and kickbacks.

Gregorio went on to say that Fifa presidential election, which is being contested between Blatter and Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan, will take place as scheduled on Friday.

"In spite of what has been said, we are very happy right now. It is once again FIFA suffering under the circumstances," he said.

"There was never such an idea to postpone the congress or the election. One thing has nothing to do with the other. The election will take place as planned."

After the Swiss Federal Office of Justice stated that they will be "questioning 10 persons who took part in voting on the allocation of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups as members of the Executive Committee in 2010", there have been speculations whether a re-voting will be done to allocate new countries to host the next two Fifa World Cups if it emerged the earlier voting was rigged.

But Gregorio has confirmed that the host countries of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups will not be changed and the tournament will take place in Russia and Qatar respectively as planned.

"We speculate maybe Russia loses it - will they, won't they? Russia and Qatar will be played, I don't want to go into more speculation," he added.

While admitting that the on-going corruption investigation on its members is not good for the "image" and the "reputation" of Fifa, Gregorio insisted this it is "good for cleaning up the game."

"It's not good for image, it's not good for reputation, but it's good for cleaning up the game," said Gregorio.

"We wouldn't have initiated proceedings on the 18th November if we didn't think it would be good for FIFA," he added. 

He was referring to Fifa launching the World Cup criminal investigation after former US attorney Michael Garcia published a controversial report claiming that a lot of corruption had taken place during the voting to determine the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.