GENE­VA-Af­ter ban­ish­ing Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam for life in a bribery scan­dal, FI­FA was chal­lenged yes­ter­day to up­hold its ze­ro-tol­er­ance fight against cor­rup­tion by launch­ing a deep­er probe in­to a now-in­fa­mous meet­ing in Trinidad.A wider probe must ex­am­ine three more mem­bers of FI­FA's ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee who ac­com­pa­nied the Qatari of­fi­cial on his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign vis­it and all the Caribbean foot­ball lead­ers al­leged­ly re­ceiv­ing his $40,000 cash gifts, the Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al glob­al watch­dog said.

A re­quest by FI­FA's ethics pan­el chair­man for new in­ves­ti­ga­tions to be launched will keep the fo­cus on cor­rup­tion this week, as Sepp Blat­ter and his world foot­ball fam­i­ly gath­ers in Brazil to launch its mar­quee, mon­ey­mak­ing event at the 2014 World Cup qual­i­fy­ing draw on Sat­ur­day.Adding to the gov­ern­ing body's un­ease, bin Ham­mam's re­it­er­at­ed pledge yes­ter­day, to fight his life ban through all avail­able le­gal chan­nels in Switzer­land could mean FI­FA and Qatar be­ing taint­ed by cor­rup­tion claims for at least 18 months-de­spite the con­tro­ver­sial 2022 World Cup host work­ing hard to quash un­proven al­le­ga­tions that it won the host­ing rights by un­eth­i­cal means.

First, top FI­FA ad­min­is­tra­tor Jerome Val­cke must de­cide how deep and wide to delve in­to the most se­ri­ous scan­dal in its 107-year his­to­ry."Every­thing has to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed," TI sports ad­vis­er Sylvia Schenk told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. "If bin Ham­mam is pun­ished for giv­ing mon­ey, some­one has to be pun­ished for tak­ing mon­ey. It can't be oth­er­wise."

Bin Ham­mam's al­lies on FI­FA's 24-man rul­ing pan­el-Worawi Maku­di of Thai­land, Ver­non Mani­lal Fer­nan­do of Sri Lan­ka and Egypt's Hany Abou Ri­da-ac­com­pa­nied him on a trip to woo Caribbean vot­ers.FI­FA's code of ethics re­quires that "of­fi­cials shall re­port any ev­i­dence of vi­o­la­tions of con­duct to the FI­FA sec­re­tary gen­er­al," but all three told FI­FA in­ves­ti­ga­tors that they saw no ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing in Trinidad.

Up to 15 Caribbean Foot­ball Union mem­ber coun­tries are un­der sus­pi­cion of ac­cept­ing $40,000 bribes to back bin Ham­man's chal­lenge to FI­FA pres­i­dent Blat­ter, then deny­ing it hap­pened.Ethics pan­el chair­man Petrus Damaseb said on Sat­ur­day he'd asked Val­cke to open oth­er cas­es.

"In the light of the ev­i­dence dis­closed in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the hear­ings, the ethics com­mit­tee de­cid­ed to ask the sec­re­tary gen­er­al to re­quest a fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­duct of oth­ers who at­tend­ed the meet­ing of May 10th and 11th in Trinidad and whose con­duct jus­ti­fies fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion," said Damaseb, a judge from Namib­ia.Schenk said Damaseb's lack of au­thor­i­ty to take up cas­es was a flaw in FI­FA's process.

"They are not re­al­ly in­de­pen­dent, even if as a per­son they do their best. That's some­thing that has to be changed in the fu­ture," she said.Ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed to Damaseb's five-man pan­el which con­vict­ed bin Ham­mam in­clud­ed state­ments from wit­ness­es rep­re­sent­ing nine CFU mem­bers.The whistle­blow­ers' tes­ti­mo­ny could lead to lengthy bans for their Caribbean col­leagues, some of whom re­ject­ed of­fers to meet with FI­FA's in­ves­ti­ga­tors led by for­mer FBI di­rec­tor Louis Freeh.