ALLEGATIONS of match-fixing have resulted in the arrest of top officials from the Chinese football team owned by Sheffield United.
Chendgu Blades' president Xu Hongtao and his deputy You Kewei are accused of paying a bribe to the manager of rival club Qingdao to throw a match against them.
Qingdao's manager Liu Hongwei has also been arrested.
The Chengdu officials are alle
ged to have given Liu bribes to throw the Chinese second division match in September 2007. He was allegedly paid 300,000 yuan - £27,000 - in cash, and a fake invoice for 200,000 yuan - £18,000 - for one month's rental of Chengdu's training base.
Qingdao allegedly fielded a second-string team in the match and made substitutions in the second half to weaken the team further. Chengdu won 2-0. The result helped Chengdu gain promotion to the country's top league, the Jia A.
Details of the case have been revealed through the Chinese state media.
"You, Xu and Liu, who manipulated the match result using commercial bribery, have violated the criminal law," a policeman in the task force investigating corruption in Chinese soccer was quoted as saying.
Sheffield United bought Chengdu in 2006 and the team finished seventh in the Chinese top division last season.
The probe into match fixing followed a string of comments in recent months by top Communist Party officials on the need to clean up the professional game in China.
A spokesman for Sheffield United said the club did not wish to comment on the arrests at present.
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