Brazil's attorney general has been asked by a Senate committee to bring criminal charges against top football executives.

The president of the Senate committee of inquiry handed the attorney-general 1,600 pages of detailed accusations and asked for criminal charges to be brought against 17 top men of Brazilian football.

The committee has spent over a year investigating the various scandals surrounding the game's leading executives.

They include Ricardo Teixeira, the president of the Brazilian football federation, as well as the chairmen of leading clubs like Vasco, Flamengo and Santos and the chairmen of the federations of Rio, Sao Paulo and many other states.

They are accused of a whole series of financial crimes, from money-laundering to tax evasion, including embezzlement, fraud and illegal appropriation of profits from games and commercial contracts.

Struggling team

According to the Senate committee, hundreds of thousands of dollars were diverted from the game into the pockets of the men who ran it.

Their findings are based on documents and information obtained from the inland revenue, the central bank and the federal police, and the questioning of scores of witnesses including the accused, who have all denied the charges.

Brazil's national team - four times World Cup winners - had to struggle hard to qualify for next year's tournament in Japan and Korea.

Many Brazilians think the corruption and the commercial spirit which have taken over the running of the game is resulting in their team's poor performance.