Prosecutors announced Wednesday that they had arrested three former and current volleyball players from the country’s top league and one broker on suspicion of match-fixing.
The Daegu District Prosecutor’s Office said four men, including a 30-year-old surnamed Yum and a 29-year-old broker surnamed Kang, were in custody for alleged involvement in rigging matches for illegal sports gambling.
Yum, who played with KEPCO45 in the Korean Volleyball League until last year before his retirement in July, is accused of accepting money from Kang in exchange for deliberately making mistakes and helping his team lose in matches in February 2010.
Two other players were also arrested for allegedly rigging at least four matches, according to the prosecutors.
The investigators allege Yum and other players accepted the bribe money from Kang who made larges sums of money by betting on the games through illegal gambling websites.
The prosecutors are now looking into whether the three suspects shared the money with other players to fix matches. It is the first-ever such investigation into the country’s professional volleyball league.
It is also the first match-fixing investigation since the scandal that rocked the K-League last May.
By Oh Kyu-wook (
596story@heraldcorp.com)
