It's worth reflecting on! The verdict of the anti-corruption case in Chinese football has been announced one after another, and the amount involved exceeds 320 million

Reporter Lu Mi reports From December 11th to 13th, courts in Hubei Province held court sessions one after another, and pronounced the first-instance verdict on Du Zhaocai, Liu Yi, Li Tie, Liu Gang and other former Chinese Football Association, local Football Association dignitaries and football personalities.

According to public data, the total amount involved in the Chinese football anti-corruption case has exceeded 320 million yuan.

In January 2024, CCTV will broadcast the anti-corruption documentary "Continue to Make Efforts to Promote in Depth", which discharged a corrupt lineup of 11 starters + 3 substitutes in Chinese football, and the arrested Chinese football practitioners involved many functional departments. Words such as bribery, bribery, and embezzlement appear in the relevant judgments of the persons involved in the case. In March, the Hubei District Court kicked off the public announcement of the verdict, and the amount of illegal property received by the people involved in the case gradually surfaced.

On March 26, 2024, the Intermediate People's Court of Huangshi City, Hubei Province announced that Chen Xuyuan, the former chairman of the Chinese Football Association, was sentenced to life imprisonment and deprived of political rights for life for the crime of accepting bribes in the first instance, and all his relevant illegal gains and all property under his personal name were confiscated to the state treasury, and Chen Xuyuan illegally accepted 81.03 million yuan of property from others (4 million yuan was not actually obtained). furthermore Li Tie, the former head coach of the Chinese men's national football team, was involved in the case with nearly 120 million yuan, and the two of them together amounted to 200 million; other personnel serving in the General Administration of Sports and various departments of the Chinese Football Association illegally accepted property from others at the level of 10 million, including Du Zhaocai, former deputy director of the General Administration of Sports, who illegally accepted nearly 43.41 million yuan of other people's property; Yu Hongchen, former vice chairman of the Chinese Football Association, illegally accepted nearly 22.54 million yuan of other people's property; Dong Zheng, former general manager of the Chinese Super League Company, illegally accepted nearly 22 million yuan of other people's property; and Chen Yongliang, former executive deputy secretary general of the Chinese Football Association and former director of the Ministry of State Management, illegally accepted nearly 19.34 million yuan of other people's property； Li Yuyi, former vice chairman of the Chinese Football Association, illegally accepted nearly 12 million yuan of property from others.

The above figures are all the amounts announced by the courts at public hearings, totaling more than 320 million.

Within a year, a total of 16 people involved in the case in Chinese football were publicly sentenced, and in addition to the seven people who announced the amount involved, nine people were sentenced and fined for bribery, bribery or embezzlement. They are Ma Chengquan, Liu Yi, Qi Jun, Huang Song, Tan Hai, Liu Gang, Gu Jianming, Liu Lei, and Fu Xiang. Among these 9 people, Liu Lei, the former deputy director of the Wuhan National Fitness Center and the former director of the competition department of the Wuhan Foot Management Center, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison in the first trial, which was the shortest; Ma Chengquan, the former chairman of the Chinese Super League, and Liu Yi, the former secretary general of the Chinese Football Association, although they did not disclose the specific amount, were sentenced to a longer sentence of 11 years, three months and 11 years respectively in the first trial.

In September this year, the Chinese Football Association announced the first batch of banned football lists, and a total of 61 practitioners were banned to varying degrees for "fake and gambling". However, the name of the club involved in the case is not included in the list.

CCTV's "Continue to Make Efforts to Promote the "Three Non-Corruptions" documentary" mentioned in the documentary "Promoting the "Three Non-Corruptions" in One Piece" that there were 23 clubs involved in the Dong Zheng case, more than 20 in the Chen Yongliang case, 13 in the Yu Hongchen case, and 9 in the Chen Xuyuan case.

The documentary disclosed that Chen Xuyuan accepted the request of Meng Jing, then president of Huaxia Fortune Foundation Co., Ltd., to provide assistance to the company's Huaxia Club in event arrangement, job recommendation, and qualification access. From September 2019 to the second half of 2021, Chen Xuyuan received a total of 16 million yuan. "I took the club's money myself, so I wouldn't have caught this kind of culture." Chen Xuyuan said in the film.

Du Zhaocai said: "In the hunt for the interests of the club owners, some have gone with the flow. In 2022, the General Administration of Sports asked Du Zhaocai to take the lead in investigating and dealing with suspected match-fixing in the Chinese League, but Du Zhaocai secretly changed the concept and used the so-called research to be perfunctory. In addition, Du Zhaocai took advantage of his position to seek improper benefits for the football club in matters such as home relocation and player transfer.

Not only Chen Xuyuan and Du Zhaocai, but even former officials of the Chinese Football Association are also collecting money during their tenure in the Football Association. Yu Hongchen, Li Yuyi and others have taken advantage of their positions to provide assistance to many football clubs in league relegation and other aspects, and illegally accepted other people's property.

Before becoming the head coach of the national team, Li Tie held positions in Hebei Huaxia Happiness and Wuhan Zall Club. From 2017 to 2019, Li Tie took advantage of his position as the general manager and head coach of Zall Club to provide assistance to Hebei Huaxia Happiness Club in matters such as player transfer and winning games, and successively received a total of 26.75 million yuan from Huaxia Club. From 2015 to 2019, during Li Tie's tenure at Huaxia Club and Zall Club, in order to win the game or obtain favorable results, he agreed with the person in charge of the club to ask other football clubs to cooperate or play negatively in the game, and Huaxia Club and Zall Club gave a total of more than 39.05 million yuan to the relevant personnel.

Li Tie revealed in the documentary: "In order to achieve results, I find referees to do work, send money to opposing players and coaches, and some clubs find clubs." On the referee line, Tan Hai, the former director of the referee management department of the Chinese Football Association, and Qi Jun, the former director of the strategic planning department (former director of the competition department and in charge of referees), were both sentenced for accepting bribes.

At present, only Wuhan Zall, Hebei Huaxia Happiness, Tianjin Quanjian and Guangzhou Evergrande have publicly named the clubs involved in the case, and the first three clubs no longer exist.

Within the Football Association, a number of senior executives, including Chen Xuyuan and Yu Hongchen, committed crimes because others sought promotion and adjustment. Among them, the most typical is the appointment of Chen Yongliang and the appointment of Li Tie as the head coach of the national team.

In March this year, Chen Yongliang, former executive deputy secretary general of the Chinese Football Association and minister of state management, was sentenced to 14 years in prison and fined 2.2 million yuan by the Xian'an District Court of Xianning City, Hubei Province, for the crime of accepting bribes and offering bribes in the first instance. The public prosecution accused Chen Yongliang of frantically accumulating wealth 51 times in eight years, and illegally accepting property from others totaling 19,344,440 yuan.

The prosecutor said that Chen Yongliang played around in the Chinese Super League, China League A and other competitions at all levels, and colluded with some clubs. He has responded to various requests for clubs to win games, adjust the venue, select players for the national team, and be exempted from punishment, and abuse his power wantonly. In order to thank Yu Hongchen for greeting Ma Chengquan, then chairman of the China Super League, Du Zhaocai, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Chinese Football Association, and Chen Xuyuan, head of the preparatory group for the general election of the Chinese Football Association, and giving him care in terms of promotion, Yu Hongchen was given a total of 900,000 yuan four times.

As the former minister of the Ministry of State Management, Chen Yongliang participated in the whole process of Li Tie becoming the coach of the national football team and signing a four-year high-paying work contract with him. Both were involved in manipulating players to be selected for the national team.

In order to become the head coach of the national team, Li Tie persuaded Wuhan Zall Club to pay a bribe of 2 million to Chen Xuyuan, and at the same time paid a bribe of 1 million to Liu Yi, then secretary general of the Football Association, out of his own pocket. In this way, Li Tie successfully became the head coach of the men's national football selection team. From 2019 to 2021, Li Tie took advantage of his position as the head coach of the national men's football selection team and the head coach of the men's national football team, or the convenience of his authority and status, to provide assistance to relevant units and individuals in matters such as players being selected for the national team, winning games, and signing clubs, and illegally accepted a total of more than 50.89 million yuan from others. In fact, the players who entered the national team because of the trading of power and money, after these people involved in the case were dismissed, they no longer had the opportunity to enter the national team. Tian Xudong, the former chairman of Wuhan Zall Club, said: "When I saw the list of the national team that day, my face was red. I know that the ability of our players can't go in, not a single one! ”

In addition to the club's bribery and bribery, local football associations also exist.

In this series of anti-corruption and anti-gambling cases, a total of 4 local football association executives were sentenced, among them, Liu Lei, former deputy director of Wuhan National Fitness Center and former director of the competition department of Wuhan Football Management Center, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison and fined 300,000 yuan in the first instance for the crime of accepting bribes and offering bribes; Fu Xiang, former director of the Wuhan Football Management Center, former executive vice president and secretary general of the Wuhan Football Association, was sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined 1.4 million yuan in the first instance; Gu Jianming, former chairman and secretary general of the Chengdu Football Association and former member of the Executive Committee of the Chinese Football Association, was sentenced to six years in prison and fined RMB 400,000 for corruption, bribery, and bribery by units. Liu Gang, former full-time vice chairman of the Chengdu Football Association, was sentenced to eight years in prison and fined RMB 700,000 in the first instance. The above four persons recovered their embezzlement proceeds in accordance with law, returned them to the victim units, and recovered their bribe-taking assets in accordance with law and turned them over to the state treasury.

In the anti-corruption documentary, Chen Xuyuan once recalled a scene, "Come to my room, put the backpack on my sofa, and say Chairman Chen congratulates you, congratulate you, I hope you can take care of more, and then I say something, he said the old rules, we are all like this." This happened in August 2019, the first night of Chen Xuyuan's election as the sixth president of the Chinese Football Association. The existence of this kind of thing shows that from the local football association to the Chinese football association, there is a chain and atmosphere of interest transmission.

The anti-corruption case of Chinese football is about to complete the final trial, the amount of corruption and the fact of these power-for-money transactions, the damage to Chinese football is tragic, worthy of deep reflection by the entire industry practitioners, strengthening industry supervision, normalized anti-corruption should be the top priority of the development of Chinese football.