LONDON, April 12: FIFA, world soccer’s ruling body, called an emergency meeting of its executive committee on Friday after president Sepp Blatter stopped an audit of the organisation’s finances.

Blatter’s decision on Thursday to halt the investigation, which was started against his wishes, was labelled “unacceptable” by Lennart Johansson, president of Europe’s controlling body UEFA.

Blatter, under pressure for months over his running of the world’s most popular sport, said it was necessary because of a possible break of confidentiality involving a member or members of the executive committee.

“In order to guarantee and to protect the interests of FIFA and the FIFA executive committee, I have to suspend the work of the FIFA ad hoc Internal Audit Committee pending an investigation into a breach of confidentiality and the way documents, which have been given to the members of the Committee, have been handled.

“Therefore today’s meeting has been postponed. No further documents will be disseminated until the security of all documents is certain and confidentiality re-installed.”

Blatter’s letter to David Will, chairman of the Internal Audit Committee, was dated April 11 and posted on the FIFA website on Friday as Johansson demanded an emergency meeting of FIFA’s executive committee be called.

The emergency meeting will be held on May 3.—Reuters