Hot on the Web

Referees implicated in soccer scandal

By Wang Huazhong and Xin Dingding (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-08 07:41

BEIJING: Police investigating soccer match-fixing scandals have taken away four referees, including "gold whistle" Lu Jun, for interrogation, reports said.

The referees are the first from their profession to be targeted after more than 20 officials, players and club managers have been arrested or detained in the clampdown, which began last March.

Shanghai TV reported on Saturday that renowned referee Lu Jun, 53, Huang Junjie, 44, and two other referees from Guangdong and Hebei provinces had been taken to Shenyang, capital of Northeast China's Liaoning province, for interrogation.

Wei Di, executive vice-president of the Chinese Football Association (CFA), confirmed Huang is in police custody. He also told Jinghua Times on Saturday: "Lu's problem might be in connection with his malpractice in early years."

China Daily could not contact the CFA on Sunday. Xi'an Daily reported that Lu's mobile phone had been switched off for days.

Wei said it was "predictable" that problems might be found with referees, since the profession shoulders "inescapable" responsibility for the current dire situation in Chinese soccer.

Although the exact number of referees under investigation remains unknown, Wei said that if there ends up being a shortage of referees, young referees would be promoted and international ones could be hired to fill the vacancies.

He did not anticipate the situation interfering with the approaching kick-off of China's leagues this month.

"Faced with this kind of problem, only a complete destruction could enable a complete reconstruction," the Jinghua Times quoted Wei as having said.

In China it usually takes about 100,000 yuan ($14,700) to bribe a referee and 500,000 to bribe a team to throw a match, according to soccer commentator He Xinping.

Prior to the arrest of Zhang Jianqiang, the former director of the CFA's referee committee, as part of the ongoing crackdown, it was believed crooked referees were difficult to catch, because few soccer club executives or stakeholders would report themselves for bribing referees.

The newspaper Goal China has previously reported that referees cannot manipulate a game on their own without assistance from club players and managers.