China

Former Chinese footballer jailed for 3 years

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-01-22 07:00

SHENYANG, Northeast China: Former Chinese soccer player Lv Dong was sentenced to three years in prison by a local court for running online gambling, the local juridical sources said on Thursday.

The chief judge of the Dashiqiao city at Yingkou, China's Northeast Liaoning province, said Lv Dong ran the online gambling as a general agent by exploiting overseas network "Winning Goal" from September 2008 to March 2009.

During the period, Lv had received a total betting amount of 30.24 million yuan ($4 million) from his agents and other gamblers, and he had handed in 110,000 yuan ($15,000) after being caught of his illegal betting.

Lv was sentenced to three-year imprisonment with an additional fine of 1.5 million yuans (some 200,000 US dollars), the sources said.

Lv, born in 1967, was a member of Liaoning's 10-time champion team in the Chinese soccer league. After his retirement in the 1990s, he worked as a coach for its second-string team and ran a bar.

Lv, who said he will obey the ruling, confessed that he had controlled three accounts of WH0002, Wj228B and HQ711 from Winning Goal for the online gambling, and took 20 percent kickbacks from the losers' betting as well as one percent of the total inflow of betting from September 8, 2008 to March 22, 2009.

"I received the kickbacks something around 70,000 to 80,000 yuan ($10,000), and the money were transferred through bank," said Lv.

According to Lv, the Winning Goal runs the online gambling in four categories: shareholders, general agents, agents and members, and only those members are allowed to cast their betting, while the others merely split the dividends in accordance with their agreed percentages of 2.25, 1.25 and 0.75.

Last November, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security said at least four people had been detained for suspected bribery. In December, police made more arrests, including You Kewei and Xu Hongtao, two former leaders with Chengdu Blades club.

The police crackdown began in March 2009 when a high-profile committee was set up by 12 ministry-level organs to clean up corruption in Chinese soccer.