Police investigating a multi-million-pound scandal at the European commission plan to make new arrests within weeks, a source close to the investigation write John Follain and Nicola Smith.

Breaking an alleged corruption ring that investigators said involved contracts worth tens of millions, police last week arrested three Italians living in Brussels. They are accused of corruption, fraud and criminal conspiracy over kickbacks allegedly paid on construction contracts for the commission’s “embassies” around the world.

The detained men were Giancarlo Ciotti, 46, a commission official responsible for offices abroad, Sergio Tricarico, 39, assistant to the MEP and former football star Gianni Rivera, and Angelo Troiano, 60, a building and security company manager.

Troiano is alleged to have paid bribes to obtain contracts to find premises and provide security equipment. One of his companies, EBI Security, secured contracts worth between £10,000 and £34,000 for offices in Moscow, Washington and Tokyo.

In Brussels, a spokesman for the public prosecutor Berta Bernardo-Mendez, said: “It is always possible that proof of other people involved will emerge.”

The official duties of the three suspects have prompted speculation that corruption within the commission will prove to be widespread. The commission said Ciotti did not have the authority to sign rental and security contracts.

“No single person takes these decisions,” said a spokesman for Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who is in charge of running the embassies.

The rules were tightened in 2003, a year before the inquiry began, when a Finnish businessman complained to the commission’s antifraud squad that he had paid £235,000 as an advance on a £408,000 kickback for the construction of commission offices in Delhi.

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