No sport, no league and no country is immune to match fixing, and now the Victorian Premier League is reeling from its own scandal.
Ten people have been arrested from the newly promoted Southern Stars club, including nine players and their coach, Zaya Younan.
Younan has been charged with eight offences relating to the alleged fixing of matches between July 21 and last Friday.
Millions of dollars were gambled by an international criminal syndicate who profited over the Stars’ lacklustre results. Wilson Raj Perumal has been named the ringleader, a Singaporean national who has been charged multiple times for match fixing.
It is not known how many games were affected, but Football Federation Australia and its Victorian counterpart aren’t taking any chances. All their 21 games have been stricken from the records, with no results being marked.
Their measly six points on the ladder have also been deleted.
Their last game of the season, to be played this weekend against the Greek sponsored Bentleigh Greens, has been sidelined.
Despite the FFV green-lighting the game (albeit with a no result to be recorded) Bentleigh Greens decided to forfeit the game.
Bentleigh Greens’ coach John Anastasiadis says they were not pushed to forfeit the game by the FFV, and took the decision to keep the integrity of the League and the sport.
“We just thought the game would be scrutinised too much from what’s happened,” he told Neos Kosmos.
“It’s the best thing for us to do and not put any pressure on our players and the last remaining Southern Stars players.”
“We knew that even if we play the game it wouldn’t be much of a game because there’s really nothing to play for.”
Now the team is looking towards finding another opponent to get their last match of the season done. They’re currently looking to secure a friendly.
Victoria Police and the FFA got all the proof they needed with the Southern Stars last week, when the team went up against Richmond.
Asian betting records show there had been a flood of money in the last minutes of games for the Southern Stars to forfeit goals, netting the syndicate millions.
Interpol police in France confirmed raids in Singapore saw 12 men and two women arrested.
Now links have been found in Brisbane, with Premier League club Albany Creek Excelsior becoming persons of interest in Operation Starling’s investigation.
Two British players are under investigation, who played for both the Queensland team and Southern Stars. They are said to have been in contact with Mr Raj Perumal and had joined Albany Creek in June after starting the season with Southern Stars.
Another player who had played at the Stars is also being pursued in England.
Football Federation Victoria said no other VPL clubs had been implicated and voiced their concern that the scandal has “cast a shadow” over the VPL competition this year.
In a statement, FFV chief executive Mitchell Murphy said the law abiding clubs should “not be tainted by any suggestion that those achievements were not properly and fairly earned”.
“With one round of the home and away season to play and the finals series to follow, the integrity and fairness of the remaining games in season 2013 are of paramount concern.”
Southern Stars have taken down their website and are not speaking to the media.