Former top football officials jailed over bribes

TIELING: A Chinese court jailed a former Chinese football chief and an ex-head of referees for bribery and fixing games.

Yang Yimin, former deputy chief of the Chinese Football Association (CFA) and the Chinese Football Administrative Center, was sentenced to 10-and-a-half years in prison after taking bribes of 1.25 million yuan (RM609,000).

Zhang Jianqiang, former director of the CFA’S referee committee, received a 12-year prison term for taking bribes of 2.73 million yuan (Rm1.3mil) on 24 occasions.

Yang and Zhang are among the 39 former football officials and club managers and employees who are receiving punishments for their crimes yesterday.

Yang, who had also supervised the Chinese professional football as the CFA league director, had accepted bribes from some 20 clubs and individuals on over 40 occasions, including US$10,000 (RM30,450) from Jiangsu Shuntian club, which asked Yang to fix the fitness test results for players.

Yang, who was also fined 200,000 yuan (RM96,526), told the court that he would not appeal against the sentence.

“The punishment isn’t harsh,” Yang’s attorney Wang Shujing said.

“Yang took bribes as a government official and the harshest punishment for taking bribes as a public servant could be death penalty.”

Zhang, who admitted to taking bribes from Chinese Super League clubs including Shandong Luneng and Shanghai Shenhua, had accepted money from Shenhua to help the club win the 2003 league. — Xinhua