Ex-China football president jailed for life over $10m bribes

A former president of China’s football affiliation has been sentenced to life in jail for accepting greater than $10 million in bribes, the nation’s state media reported on Tuesday, following one of many greatest anti-corruption probes within the sport in years.

The sentence handed right down to Chen Xuyuan got here within the wake of probes into greater than a dozen high-level football officers since late 2022. Chen had introduced “tremendous damage” to Chinese football, the official Xinhua information company reported, citing a courtroom ruling.

The sport has lengthy grappled with corruption, which followers have blamed for the enduring underperformance of the nationwide workforce. In 2012, two former chiefs of the identical football affiliation have been every sentenced to 10-and-a-half years in jail for taking bribes.

Chen, 67, had labored on the docks in Shanghai when he was a youth. He finally turned the top of Shanghai International Port Co within the 2010s, earlier than chairing the Chinese Football Association (CFA) in 2019.

A courtroom in central Hubei province discovered Chen had taken benefit of his varied posts from 2010 to 2023, together with these linked to the CFA, to help others in issues concerning challenge contracting, funding operations and sports activities occasions preparations, Xinhua reported.

In return, Chen accepted cash and valuables value over 81 million yuan ($11.22m).

In a state TV documentary sequence on corruption aired in January, Chen confessed to accepting bribes and described one incident the night time earlier than he turned CFA chairman when he acquired backpacks containing money from two native football officers.

Confessions of corruption have turn into a typical function on nationwide tv since President Xi Jinping got here to energy and unleashed a sweeping anti-graft marketing campaign.

“They came into my room, casually placed their backpacks on my sofa, and said, ‘congratulations, president Chen, we hope you can take care of us more,'” he stated.

“When I asked what they were offering, they responded it is just a tradition and they all do it this way.”

On Chen’s sentencing, the People’s Daily, the official paper of the ruling Communist Party, stated there was no finish level to the struggle towards corruption.

“The systemic corruption in football is by no means accidental,” the newspaper wrote. “It is imperative to trace back to the source and address the symptoms and root causes.”

Other football officers probed for corruption included Chen Yongliang, former CFA government deputy secretary-general, Liu Lei, a former director on the Wuhan Football Management Centre, Yu Hongchen, a former vice head of the CFA, and Dong Zheng, a former basic supervisor of the Chinese Super League.

Chen has been sentenced to 14 years in jail, Yu 13 years, Dong eight years, and Liu 2 1/2 years, in response to state media on Tuesday.

Li Tie, former males’s nationwide workforce head coach, and Du Zhaocai, former CFA vice chairman, each equally accused of corruption, have but to obtain their judgements.