April 25 – The Malaysian ringleader of Australia’s notorious match-fixing scandal has been jailed for three years – with two of them suspended – and the club involved deducted eight points.
Segaran ‘Gerry’ Subramaniam, arrested in September 2013 as part of a police investigation into betting irregularities surrounding Victorian Premier League club Southern Stars, pleaded guilty.
Victoria’s County Court judge Michael Bourke said Subramaniam would be deported to Malaysia when released which could be after five months since he has already served part of the sentence in detention.
Last year, Southern Stars players Reiss Noel and Joe Woolley, both from England, were convicted and fined for helping to fix four games and were slapped with worldwide life bans by FIFA. Two other former lower-league English club players have also been charged and will appear again in court in June.
Subramaniam acted as a facilitator between players at the Southern Stars and a highly organised overseas syndicate that is believed to have earned over $2 million Australian. “It betrays the people, the honest players and officials, who you and your fellow cheats rubbed shoulders with,” the judge said during sentencing.
The Southern Stars won just one of their 21 games last season, and their results have since been declared invalid by Football Federation of Victoria which charged them with “misconduct by materially injuring the reputation and goodwill of football”.
Police claim the results of five matches were fixed and that Subramaniam had instructed the team what results were needed by his bosses in Hungary and Malaysia.
The investigation was made public when Football Federation Australia (FFA) issued a statement saying 10 people from the Southern Stars had been initially arrested following a probe that stemmed from information supplied by sports and betting data intelligence agency SportRadar.
The punishments ironically came in the same week infamous Singaporean match-fixer Wilson Raj Parumal was detained in Helsinki on an international arrest warrant.
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