FIFA President Sepp Blatter and UEFA President Michel Platini have been suspended by FIFA 'from all football activities' for 90 days.

FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valke, who had already been put on leave, has also been issued with a 90 day suspension.

The chief of African football, Issa Hayatou, was named as FIFA's acting president this afternoon

FIFA's Ethics Committee is looking into the circumstances of a 2 million Swiss franc (€1.8m) payment from Sepp Blatter that Michel Platini received in 2011. The payment was for work said to carried out more than nine years previously.

Swiss prosecutors opened criminal proceedings against Blatter last week and Platini was interviewed as a witness by officers from the attorney general's office. Both strenuously deny any wrongdoing,

FIFA's ethics committee rules state that the maximum 90-day provisional suspension can be extended for a further 45 days.

That would see the provisional suspension end on 20 February - only six days before the election of Blatter's successor is due to take place. Any disciplinary hearing would have to take place before that date.

The pair can appeal against the suspension to FIFA's appeals committee within two days of being notified of the decision but they will remain suspended at least until the appeal is held.

Blatter's lawyers had claimed they would expect the "ethics committee would want to hear from the president and his counsel, and conduct a thorough review of the evidence, before making any recommendation to take disciplinary action".

That does not need to be the case for a provisional suspension however.

FIFA ethics rules state: "The chairman of the adjudicatory chamber may make his decision on the basis of the case files available to him, without hearing the parties, in which case the parties shall be summoned to a hearing or invited to submit written statements after the decision has been issued.

"After hearing the parties, the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber shall confirm, revoke or amend his decision."

In addition, FIFA also revealed today that former FIFA Vice President Chung Mong-joon has been banned for six years and fined 100,000 Swiss francs in connection with irregularities relating to the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups

The statement from FIFA's ethics committee goes on to say that the grounds for the bans are "the investigations that are being carried out by the investigatory chamber of the ethics committee."

"The proceedings against the South Korean football official Chung Mong-joon were opened in January 2015 based on findings in the report on the investigation into the bidding process for the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cups.

"He has been found guilty of infringing article 13 (general rules of conduct), article 16 (confidentiality), article 18 (duty of disclosure, cooperation and reporting), article 41 (obligation of the parties to collaborate) and article 42 (general obligation to collaborate) of the FIFA code of ethics."

"The ethics committee is unable to comment on the details of the decisions until they become final, due to the provisions of article 36 (confidentiality) of the FIFA code of ethics."