FIFA’s ethics committee took less than a day to exercise some of its new transparency powers, confirming on Wednesday that it was actively investigating nearly a dozen current and former officials.
Most of the names released Wednesday were not new: the FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, and the head of European soccer’s governing body, Michel Platini, had already been provisionally banned by FIFA as it looks into what has been described as a “disloyal payment” by Mr. Blatter to Mr. Platini.
But ethics committee investigators also confirmed that they had advanced cases related to Franz Beckenbauer, the former German star who once served on FIFA’s governing executive committee, and Angel Villar Llona of Spain, the FIFA senior vice president who is temporarily running Europe’s governing body, UEFA, while Mr.