Wolfgang Niersbach, a member of Fifa’s ruling council, was banned from football for one year on Monday in the first sanction arising from the investigation into Germany’s 2006 World Cup bid.

Fifa’s ethics committee found Niersbach guilty of failing to report findings about possible unethical conduct and conflicts of interest during the bidding process. Niersbach, who was a vice-president of the 2006 World Cup organising committee in charge of media and marketing, described the punishment as “inappropriate and excessive”. Investigators had sought a two-year ban.

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Last year he had been considered a possible successor to Michel Platini as the Uefa president before resigning as the president of the German football federation when allegations against the bid surfaced.

Niersbach retained his elected positions on the top decision-making bodies at Fifa and Uefa. He is the first member of the rebranded Fifa council, which replaced the discredited executive committee in May, to be sanctioned by the ethics division.

“This decision hits me hard,” Niersbach said. “I was confident after last Thursday’s hearing in Zurich that the ethics commission would not impose a ban, but that it would follow my argument that I am only to blame for a belated report on the critical payments between the 2006 World Cup organising committee and Fifa in 2005, of which I gradually became aware in the summer of 2015, and that it would set a different punishment. I acknowledged my mistake and regretted it again.”

Niersbach is consulting his lawyers about whether to appeal against his ban.

The case did not examine whether the Fifa code of ethics had been breached “in relation to possible acts of bribery and/or corruption” regarding the 2006 World Cup being awarded to Germany. Its sole purpose was to look at Niersbach’s awareness of, and failure to report, any such incidents to the ethics committee.