China jails former top soccer officials over bribes

TIELING, Northeast China -?A Chinese court on Saturday morning jailed a former Chinese soccer 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 ($200,000).

Zhang Jianqiang, former director of the CFA's referee committee, received a 12-year prison term for taking bribes of 2.73 million yuan ($433,000) on 24 occasions.

Yang and Zhang are among the 39 former soccer officials and club managers and employees who are receiving punishments for their crimes on Saturday.

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

Yang, who was also fined 200,000 yuan ($31,700), told the court that he would not appeal against the sentence.

"The punishment isn't harsh," Yang's attorney Wang Shujing told the Xinhua reporter. "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.

Zhang, who had also been the CFA's women's soccer department director before his arrest, was fined 250,000 ($40,000). He told the court he would not appeal against the sentence and the fine.

The Tieling court also read out the trial verdicts and sentences to the other 19 people in the morning, including Du Yunqi, former president of the Chinese first division club Qingdao, who received a seven-year jail sentence.

Soccer fans set off fireworks outside the court to celebrate the court rulings in the morning.

The verdicts and punishments for the remaining 18 defendants will be announced in the afternoon.

Chinese soccer has long been plagued with gambling, match-fixing scandals, crooked referees, corrupt administrators and violence on and off the pitch. Disaffected fans have turned away from the game and prefer to watch the big European clubs instead.

Two days ago, a court in Dandong, Liaoning Province, sentenced nine people including China's "Golden Whistle" Lu Jun to up to seven years in jail for bribery and match fixing.

Lu, a 2000 Olympic and 2002 World Cup referee, was sentenced to 5-1/2 years in jail for taking 810,000 yuan ($128,000) to fix seven league matches.

Former CFA heads Nan Yong and his successor Xie Yalong, both brought down amidst China's crackdown on soccer scandals, are awaiting trial.