Mohamed Bin Hammam, the Asian soccer chief who was due to challenge Sepp Blatter for the Fifa presidency last month, was banned for life by football's ruling body on Saturday for his part in a cash-for-votes scandal.

The 62-year-old Qatari, who has been on Fifa's executive committee since 1996, vowed to appeal against the suspension. He said he was innocent and the case against him was built upon "lies by senior Fifa officials".

A Fifa ethics committee launched an investigation following allegations that Bin Hammam, a multi-millionaire businessman, had tried to buy the votes of Caribbean Football Union (CFU)officials ahead of the presidential election on June 1.

After a two-day hearing at Fifa headquarters Bin Hammam was found to have broken seven articles of the organisation's ethics code including one on bribery, acting head of the committee Petrus Damaseb told reporters.     

Former Concacaf president Jack Warner, a major Fifa powerbroker, resigned in June after he was also accused of wrongdoing at the same meeting in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on May 10-11, the latest scandal to hit soccer's beleaguered governing body.     

Like Bin Hammam, Warner was provisionally banned pending the ethics committee investigation into allegations that Caribbean officials were handed $40,000 each in brown envelopes as a sweetener.

Bin Hammam, Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president since 2002, pulled out of the Fifa presidential race on May 29, leaving Blatter to be re-elected unopposed for a fourth term three days later.

Damaseb also said two CFU officials, Debbie Minguell and Jason Sylvester, would be banned for one year and recommended further investigations "into conduct of others who attended the meeting of May 10-11".     

Chuck Blazer, the Fifa executive committee member whose report led to the ethics committee probe, was warned for comments he made at a Concacaf (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football) meeting in Zurich on May 30. None of the four accused attended the two-day hearing in Zurich but Bin Hammam was represented by his lawyers.

"He rejects the findings and maintains his innocence," said Eugene Gulland, one of the Qatari's representatives. "He will continue to fight his case through the legal routes that are open to him.

"He has gone on record and maintains the Fifa ethics committee was going to find against him whatever the validity of the case he presented to them.

"The Fifa ethics committee has apparently based its decision on so-called circumstantial evidence which our case has clearly demonstrated was bogus, and founded on lies told by senior Fifa officials," added Gulland.

"We have not shared our evidence, which is compelling, with the media and Fifa has done exactly the opposite. There appears to be selective and continual leaking of documentation ... to the media to influence public opinion and to create bias." - Reuters