China on Friday jailed former Premier League star and men’s national coach Li Tie for 20 years for bribery, snaring one of the country’s greatest football figures in a sweeping government crackdown on corruption in sport.
President Xi Jinping has waged an unrelenting campaign against deep-seated official corruption since coming to power over a decade ago.
Anti-graft authorities took aim at the sport industry in 2022 and have announced a string of convictions for former football administrators this week.
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In the highest-profile case to date, a court in central Hubei province said Friday that Li had been sentenced to “fixed-term imprisonment of 20 years” after being found guilty of a string of offences relating to giving and receiving bribes.
The 47-year-old is one of China’s biggest football names, serving as national team coach from January 2020 to December 2021, after racking up nearly 100 international caps and playing as a midfielder for English Premier League side Everton.
But state broadcaster CCTV said he used his status as China coach to extract nearly 51 million yuan ($7 million) in bribes in return for selecting players for the national team or helping them sign for clubs.
Li also “asked others to help him” become the national coach in 2019 and handed the unnamed people one million yuan the following year, according to CCTV.
During his tenure at now-defunct Chinese Super League (CSL) side Wuhan Zall, Li also colluded with club chiefs to hand out bribes in an effort to secure the national team job, the broadcaster said.
It also listed other accusations that Li and his previous clubs had paid the equivalent of millions of dollars in bribes to seal player transfers and fix match results stretching back to 2015.
A photograph of Li published by CCTV showed the disgraced sportsman in the court dock, wearing a black hooded sweater and flanked by two police officers.
State news agency Xinhua reported later Friday that another top sport official, Du Zhaocai, had been sentenced to 14 years in prison and fined 4 million yuan for bribery.
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Du, the former deputy head of China’s General Administration of Sport who previously held a senior role at the Chinese Football Association (CFA), was convicted of taking over 43 million yuan in money and valuables over a decade until 2022.
“The wealth he illegally obtained… will be returned in accordance with the law and turned over to the state treasury,” Xinhua said.
Televised confession
China’s legal system is tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party and courts have a near-100 percent conviction rate in criminal cases.
Li’s conviction seemed certain after he pleaded guilty earlier this year to accepting over $10 million in bribes.
He also featured in a documentary aired by CCTV in January about widespread corruption in Chinese football.
CCTV occasionally airs confessions by criminal suspects before they have appeared in court, a practice widely condemned by rights groups.
In the programme, Li said he had arranged nearly $421,000 in bribes to secure the head coach position and helped fix CSL matches.
“I’m very sorry. I should have kept my head to the ground and followed the right path,” said Li during the show.
“There were certain things that at the time were common practices in football.”
String of convictions
Chinese authorities have announced a spate of corruption convictions for sports officials this week.
On Wednesday, Liu Yi, who was secretary general of the Chinese Football Association (CFA), was handed an 11-year sentence and fined 3.6 million yuan ($495,000) for taking bribes.
The same day, the former head of the CFA’s referees management office Tan Hai was given six and a half years and a 200,000-yuan fine for the same crime.
And on Tuesday, Qi Jun, the CFA’s ex-chief of strategic planning, was sentenced to seven years and slapped with a 600,000-yuan penalty.
Former CFA chief Chen Xuyuan was jailed for life in March for accepting bribes.
Proponents of Xi’s corruption crackdown say the policy promotes clean governance, but others say it also serves as a means for him to purge political rivals.
Xi is a self-proclaimed football fan who wants China to host and win the World Cup one day, but the men’s national team has long failed to impress.
FIFA currently ranks China 90th in the world, one place above the tiny Caribbean island of Curacao.
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