Sepp Blatter has resigned as FIFA President in the past hour, delivering his announcement in front of a sparsely populated room of journalists who were initially uncertain as to the purpose of the press conference.
The decision comes four days after Blatter was re-elected as FIFA President. And six days after seven senior FIFA officials were arrested as part of an FBI investigation into corruption in football.
Today, the New York Times reported that Blatter's close lieutenant, the Frenchman Jerome Valcke, had authorised the transferring of $10 million dollars from a FIFA account to the account of Jack Warner.
This payment is a central part of the indictment which alleges that Jack Warner received a bribe to vote for South Africa as the host of the 2010 World Cup.
Warner, the leader of a political party in Trinidad, was probably the most high profile of those arrested last week.
He did launch a spirited defence of himself at the weekend, albeit with the help of an article in 'The Onion'.
The US indictment does not claim that Valcke knew that the money given to Warner constituted a bribe by the South African FA.
However, the allegations do place Blatter closer to the money trail that was suspected before now.
Valcke denies that he authorised the payment.
And FIFA claim it was authorised by Argentine official and lifelong friend of Blatter, Julio Grondona.
Grondona was the head of the FIFA Finance Committee at the time.
Without alleging that FIFA are telling lies here, it is nonetheless true that Mr. Grondona boasts one significant quality which might make him an attractive scapegoat to FIFA.
He is dead.
Later it emerged that the South African FA had indeed written to Valcke asking that the offending $10 million be paid to Warner.
The money was to be used by the 2010 World Cup organising committee.
South Africa selflessly decreed that rather than fund the operation of the World Cup, it would be used to finance a rather lofty sounding entity called the Diaspora Legacy programme.
Lo and behold, the Diaspora Legacy programme was to be 'implemented directly' by the President of CONCACAF, Mr. Warner.
The Diaspora Legacy programme was allegedly set up to support Africans in the Caribbean. Most of the money was siphoned into Warner's personal account.
In addition, $750,000 of this Diaspora Legacy Programme was handed to FIFA's flamboyant informer Chuck Blazer.
Quite how this helped Africans in the Caribbean is anyone's guess really.
