“A very sad day for football”.

That is how Larry Mussenden, the Bermuda Football Association president, summed up the arrests of seven top Fifa officials on United States corruption charges in Zurich, Switzerland yesterday.

The world’s most popular sport was plunged into turmoil after plain-clothed Swiss police arrested the powerful Fifa figures in a dawn raid at a luxury Zurich hotel and detained them pending extradition proceedings to the United States.

US authorities said a total of nine football officials and five sports media and promotions executives have been charged with corruption involving more than $150 million in bribes over a period of 24 years.

They said their investigation exposed complex money-laundering schemes, millions of dollars in untaxed incomes and tens of millions in offshore accounts held by Fifa officials.

Mussenden, who is attending this week’s Fifa congress and presidential election along with fellow BFA executives Mark Wade, Gregory Grimes and Crenstant Williams, said: “My first reaction is that this is a very sad day for football. I know some of the people involved so I feel sad about that. I recognise that there is a long road ahead for people to be able to defend themselves and the decisions that they have made.

“It’s very disheartening and a shock to see what has transpired. I have watched the reports on television and there are a number of names that I know and recognise. It’s a real shock in respect to Jeffrey Webb, the president of Concacaf and Fifa vice-president, to be in this position. It all seems incredible at the moment.

“There has not been a notice of meetings from the Caribbean Football Union or Concacaf, but I anticipate that the executives will meet and get the member associations to meet so we can determine the way forward.”

Mussenden, who is performing his role as the chair of the Fifa ad-hoc electoral committee in Zurich, added: “The Bermuda Football Association stands by good governance and the proper application of the rules and regulations. We’ve always governed football in Bermuda to a very high standard.”

The US Department of Justice named those arrested in Zurich as Caymanian Jeffrey Webb, who is the president of Concacaf under whose auspices the BFA’s fall under, Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Rafael Esquivel, José Maria Marin and Eugenio Figueredo.

The Department said the defendants included US and South American sports marketing executives alleged to have paid and agreed to pay “well over $150 million in bribes and kickbacks to obtain lucrative media and marketing rights to international soccer tournaments”.

US prosecutors said they aim to make more arrests but would not be drawn on whether Fifa president Sepp Blatter, who is standing for re-election to a fifth term at the Fifa congress tomorrow, was a target of the probe.

The arrests mark an unprecedented blow against world football’s governing body, which for years has been dogged by allegations of corruption but always escaped major criminal cases.

Blatter, who has denied and survived allegations of his involvement in corruption, said in a statement: “Let me be clear: such misconduct has no place in football and we will ensure that those who engage in it are put out of the game.”

One of those indicted, former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner of Trinidad, solicited $10 million in bribes from the South African government to host the 2010 World Cup, the Justice Department said.

Warner, a former Concacaf president, directed a number of co-conspirators to arrange the payment, which was eventually sent from a Fifa account in Switzerland to a Bank of America account in New York that Warner controlled, the indictment said.

He turned himself over to Trinidadian police yesterday shortly after they issued an arrest warrant at the request of authorities in the US. Earlier in the day, Warner denied any wrongdoing.

The US took jurisdiction of the case in part because the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI secured the cooperation of US citizen Chuck Blazer, a former top Fifa official, who US officials said had not paid taxes for years. Blazer’s lawyer, Eric Corngold, declined to comment.

In addition to Blazer, 70, others who pleaded guilty were José Hawilla, 71, owner of the Traffic Group, a sports marketing firm founded in Brazil, and two of his companies; Daryan Warner, 46, and Daryll Warner, 40, sons of Jack Warner. As a member of the Caribbean Football Union, the BFA’s television rights are held by Traffic Sports.

“Traffic Sports is the company that Caribbean Football Union sold its television rights to as a body on behalf of all its members,” said Mussenden, who is also chair of the Fifa appeals committee.

“We will also have to await and have some further discussion with CFU about what that means.

“It’s clear this is early days and it’s very hard for me to make a comment on behalf of the Bermuda Football Association at this moment. We are hopeful that in meeting with our colleague countries we can find out what is the true position and how it affects us as part of the CFA and Concacaf.”

Separate from the U.S. investigation, Swiss prosecutors said they had opened their own criminal proceedings against unidentified people on suspicion of mismanagement and money laundering related to the awarding of rights to host the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2022 event in Qatar.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters at a news conference in New York her office did not want to impede the 2018 and 2022 World Cups but looked forward to working with Swiss authorities investigating the award of the tournaments.

“FIFA has a lot of soul searching to do,” she said.

• Additional reporting by Stephen Wright