German police question 2 players in widening match-fixing scandal

Police question 2 players in match-fixing scandal

FRANKFURT — German police have questioned two players from the Fortuna Duesseldorf soccer club Thursday in connection with the widening match-fixing scandal in Europe.

The two play for the reserve side of the club, which competes in the fourth-tier league. The main Fortuna team is in the second division.

The club gave no further details about Thursday’s interrogations.

Patrick Neumann, the captain of SC Verl, another fourth-tier German club allegedly involved in the scandal, has decided to cooperate with authorities and “tell them all he knows,” the player’s lawyer Lutz Klose said.

“But he doesn’t have much to confess,” Klose said.

Neumann and teammate Tim Hagedorn have been suspended by the club.

In another development, police raided the apartment of a 21-year-old person suspected of trying to bribe a player of the fourth-tier Goslar club into throwing a match. The player reported the attempt to the club, which then informed police.

Meanwhile, the Bavarian justice ministry reportedly has drafted a law that would punish match-fixing, doping and other manipulation in sports by up to 15 years in prison.

The questioning of the two Fortuna players came one day after UEFA announced that five clubs in Albania, Latvia, Slovenia and Hungary are suspected of match-fixing.

German prosecutors are leading an investigation in Europe, with 200 games under scrutiny, including qualifying matches for the Champions League. UEFA has called it the biggest match-fixing scandal to date.

The prosecutor’s office in Bochum, which specialized in cracking down on organized crime, has declined to give details about its ongoing investigation besides saying that 15 people have been arrested in Germany and two in Switzerland.

Prosecutors believe an international gang is suspected of bribing players, coaches, referees and other officials to manipulate games so that the gang would make money by betting on fixed games. About 200 people are suspected of being involved and the ring leaders are believed to have made at least $15 million.

“In Europe, you have the bribery, in Asia you have the betting and in Berlin you have the cashing in,” Joerz Ziercke, the president of the Federal Crime Office, the German equivalent of the FBI, said at a conference Thursday.

German authorities originally named nine countries where they believe the manipulations had occurred — Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, Switzerland and Turkey.

On Wednesday, UEFA also named clubs in Albania and Latvia and identified the five as KF Tirana, FC Dinaburg, KS Vllaznia, NK IB Ljubljana and Honved Budapest. Seven qualifying games in the Champions League and the Europa League between July 16 and Aug. 6 involving the five clubs were allegedly manipulated.

In an announcement on its Web site, Honved said it was ready to cooperate and believed it was innocent, although it added that “all clubs, including Honved, could have players ready to betray their club, fellow players and supporters for their own selfish financial gain.”

Honved, the best known of the five clubs, enjoyed its glory days in the 1950s, when it featured such stars as Ferenc Puskas, Sandor Kocsis and Jozsef Bozsik.

“We welcome the investigation naturally and we will help UEFA in every way we can to bring the investigation to a successful conclusion,” Honved owner George Hemingway said.

Honved’s 5-1 loss to Fenerbahce in Europa League qualifying is under suspicion.

“We believe … both our club and our players are totally clean and we believe that we will be exonerated at the end of the investigation,” Hemingway said.

The Albanian soccer federation said both Albanian teams named — KF Tirana and KS Vllaznia — will play in weekend league matches and no action would be taken against the clubs, officials or players until the probe is concluded.

“We fully support the ongoing investigation and are cooperating,” Albanian soccer federation spokesman Tritan Kokona said, adding that the federation would impose sanctions if the clubs are found guilty of any wrongdoing.

The Ljubljana team in Slovenia said on its Web site that it was “deeply disappointed and embittered” by reports that the club was implicated in the scandal and called for a speedy conclusion to the inquiry.

The team’s director, Nenad Protega, promised the club would do everything to help clear up the matter.

The Latvian federation last month banned Dinaburg for the rest of the season after receiving information that the general manager and coach were betting on the team’s matches.

The two officials, general manager Oleg Gavrilov and Tamaza Pertia, were banned for life.

The federation acted after receiving information from UEFA about club officials betting on the team’s own matches.