43 Football Players and Officials Banned for Life by Chinese Federation for Match-Fixing

Following life imprisonment for the organization’s chairman earlier this year, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) continued to penalize wrongdoing in national football by banning for life 43 players and officials for rigging matches.

As part of a campaign against corruption in one of the country’s most popular sports, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) has permanently banned 38 players and five club executives following a two-year probe that included many more participants in Chinese football into match-fixing and gambling. Zhang Xiaopeng, a senior official from the Ministry of Public Security, revealed during a news conference in Dalian that the process had determined that 120 matches had been rigged, with 41 football teams implicated. Whether or not every match was played in China wasn’t stated in the report.

Chinese and Korean Internationals Among Sanctioned Players

The investigation results were made public at the press conference by the ministry and the General Administration of Sport of China, which the CFA president attended. Among those banned for life are three former Chinese internationals, Jin Jingdao, Guo Tianyu, and Gu Chao, as well as Korean national team player Son Jun-ho. The last-mentioned athlete was jailed in China for 10 months before being released in March and returning to his country.

Zhang reported that 17 more people were found to have participated in match-fixing and bribery, while 44 people were facing criminal charges for bribery, gambling, and the unauthorized opening of casinos. Fourty-three of the 44, according to CFA President Song Kai, have lifetime bans from all football-related activities, and 17 others obtained five-year bans.

By the way, gambling is illegal in China. In reality, though, Chinese citizens are allowed to partake in state-run lotteries and legally gamble in the special administrative regions of Macau and Hong Kong, which were formerly governed by Portugal and the United Kingdom, respectively. These regions have legal systems similar to those of those European nations. Online gaming on the mainland is still banned in China, however, internet traffic routed through virtual private networks (VPNs), shadowy financial networks, and payment gateways allows Chinese clients to access and transfer money to online gaming sites, which benefits the sites for the best offshore sports betting.

Chinese Football Has Long Grappled with Corruption

Chinese fans have long held corruption in football responsible for the men’s national team’s poor results. China, meanwhile, has stepped up its campaign against corruption linked to the sport.

August saw the sentence of a former director of the competition department to seven years in prison and a former vice president of the CFA to 11 years in prison for receiving bribes. In March, a former chairman of the CFA received a life sentence.