February 26 – FIFA has issued another stern signal that match-fixing will be harshly punished by extending worldwide the February 18 bans on 58 players and officials handed out by the Chinese Football Association.
China has been desperate to clean up its act after years of rampant corruption. China’s Xinhua news agency reported last week that the 58 included two former football chiefs who were jailed in June for accepting bribes.
Nan Yong (pictured), the former head of Chinese football, was sentenced to 10 and a half years for taking bribes worth more than 1.48 million yuan ($237,500) while his predecessor Xie Yalong received an identical sentence and was also fined 200,000 yuan. Former CFA deputy head Yang Yimin and World Cup referee Lu Jun were among the 33 banned from football for life.
China have even clamped down on Super League club Shanghai Shenhua, fined a million yuan and deducted six points for next season for fixing a game in their 2003 league-winning campaign.
“The sanctions by the Chinese Football Association’s disciplinary committee involve players and officials, with 25 receiving a five-year ban from all football activities while the remaining 33 individuals were banned from all football activities for life,” a FIFA statement said.
“The Chairman of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee has extended the sanctions to have worldwide effect.
“In taking those sanctions and notifying FIFA of them, the CFA has emphasised its on-going commitment to stamping out all forms of match-fixing and corruption in the game.”
The sentences “followed investigations and trials conducted by Chinese judicial authorities between 2010 and 2012 in which the Chinese Football Association (CFA) cooperated fully,” FIFA added. “The cases involved relate to incidents of match-fixing that took place in the 1990s and early 2000s.”
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