Police investigating claims of corruption in football arrested five men today as they launched a series of raids across the country.

City of London Police said the five were being held on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting.

The men - aged 69, 60 55, 48 and 30 - were taken into custody as officers swooped on eight addresses.

A spokeswoman for the force said one search was continuing while seven others had been completed. She added that it was against force policy to disclose the names of those detained or the exact locations of where the searches had taken place.

Although the City of London Police were involved, it does not necessarily imply any connection with the nation’s capital, as it is the national lead force for fraud investigation.

The raids were the latest development in attempts by the authorities to root out corruption in the national game which began after the report by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington this summer into football transfers.

The Quest team led by Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner, trawled through 362 transfer deals made over a 15-month period, and today's raids were part of the force’s economic crime unit’s investigation into alleged bungs in the game.

In July, police descended on Premier League clubs Newcastle United and Portsmouth plus Rangers of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League, in the ongoing hunt for evidence of corruption, although they were at pains to point out that it was as part of a separate investigation and not linked with Stevens’s findings. Computers and documents were seized on that occasion but nobody was arrested and all three clubs denied any wrongdoing.

Police also questioned Pascal Chimbonda, the Tottenham Hotspur defender, as a witness in their earlier inquiries, though there was no suggestion of any wrongdoing on his part.

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