Sepp Blatter stripped of IOC membership as FIFA exit nears

FIFA President Sepp Blatter was relieved of his International Olympic Committee ex officio membership on Monday, seven months before he will be replaced as the head of soccer's governing body, IOC President Thomas Bach said on Monday.

Blatter would ordinarily have been re-elected for another eight-year term as a procedural matter at the ongoing IOC Session in Malaysia, along with more than a dozen other members, but would be required to stand down when he left FIFA at the end of February.

The 79-year-old Swiss was re-elected for a fifth term as FIFA president in Zurich on May 29 but announced he would lay down his mandate just four days later in the wake of the worst crisis in the soccer authority's history.

FIFA was thrown into turmoil two days ahead of its presidential election when more than a dozen officials and sports marketing executives were indicted by the United States on bribery, money laundering and wire fraud charges.