FIFA fires finance director Kattner

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP):

FIFA has fired its finance director of the past 13 years, removing

another fixture of the Sepp Blatter presidential era in another round of

revelations about irregular million-dollar payments.

Markus Kattner's exit yesterday came after he spent several months in his highest-profile role at the scandal-rocked world football body as its interim top administrator promoting FIFA's wish to change its tainted culture even as his links to other investigations added up.

FIFA said Kattner was fired after an internal investigation said he allegedly broke his legal responsibilities to the organisation "in connection with his employment contract".

The 45-year-old German official was due payments worth millions of

dollars over a six-year period from 2008-14 from additions to his

contract, a person familiar with the FIFA investigation said yesterday.

The extra payments were known to then-President Blatter and then-Secretary General Jerome Valcke, Kattner's immediate boss in that period.

"We don't yet understand why these payments were made," the person said on condition of anonymity as details of the investigation are confidential. "These contract provisions were not known widely and not to the appropriate officers at FIFA."

It is unclear if the contracted payments which came to light last week could form part of a wider investigation of criminal mismanagement at FIFA conducted by Swiss federal

prosecutors, who opened proceedings against Blatter last September.