World football's governing body, Fifa, has banned a Nigerian member of its executive committee from any soccer-related activity for three years after he was said to have discussed selling his vote on the venues of future World Cup tournaments.

The Fifa ethics committee announced on Thursday that they had banned Amos Adamu "from taking part in any kind of football-related activity (administrative, sports or any other) at national and international level." The committee also fined Adamu 10,000 Swiss francs (about U.S. $10,000).

It also banned Fifa vice-president Reynald Temarii, who is from Oceania in the Pacific, for a year and fined him 5,000 francs.

The decisions were taken at an ethics committee meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, this week.

The ethics committee was chaired by Claudio Sulser of Switzerland and its five other members included Petrus Damaseb of Namibia.

Adamu, a former director general of Nigeria's National Sports Commission, became the subject of global focus after a British newspaper reported that he had expressed willingness to an undercover team from the newspaper to sell his vote.

This Day of Lagos reports that Adamu was alleged to have agreed to sell his vote to a supposed lobby group backing an American bid for the World Cup for 500,000 British pounds.

Fifa opened proceedings against the two executive committee members last month. It asked the ethics committee to hold "an independent, in-depth investigation" into the allegations.

Also banned from world football was Botswana's Ismael Bhamjee, an honorary member of the Confederation of African Football.

Fifa banned him for four years and fined him 10,000 francs. The ethics committee said the action was taken for breaching the Fifa code of ethics but did not give further details.

Bhamjee was accused in 2006 of selling tickets to a newspaper reporter working undercover, reports Kickoff.com.