K-league hands out 10 lifetime bans
Reuters - Friday 17 June 2011, 08:09
SEOUL - South Korea's professional football league handed down 10 lifetime bans on Friday, its first ever in
the country's top league, for match fixing.
The K-League's match-fixing probe has so far caught 10
active players along with gambling brokers. Those found guilty
face life-time bans and up to seven years in jail.
The players caught so far have been charged with taking
money in exchange for helping their teams lose two matches in
April, prosecutors said.
Eight of them are from the Daejeon Citizen team, with one
player accused of receiving 120 million won ($110,600) and also
sharing it with seven team mates.
"We asked the players to attend the committee meeting to
determine punishment to give them a chance to explain, none of
them attended," Qwak Byung-cheol, the president of the
investigating committee, said in a statement.
The scandal has also been linked to a player found dead last
month in a hotel room. South Korean news agency Yonhap reported
a suicide note had been discovered referring to the match-fixing
ring.
State-run sports bookmaker Sports Toto has stopped taking
bets on games at the request of K-League club owners, while the
government has threatened to terminate funding for sports
leagues tainted by match-fixing.