Three former leaders of the mainland's scandal-plagued soccer hierarchy had been formally arrested for alleged match-fixing and bribery, police said yesterday.
They are Nan Yong and Yang Yimin, former vice-chairmen of the Chinese Football Association, and Zhang Jianqiang, former director of the association's referees' committee, the Ministry of Public Security said.
Xinhua quoted a senior officer from the ministry as saying police would fully assist the CFA in wiping out corruption and work with sport, supervisory and judicial authorities to devise measures to crack down on underground gambling.
Police detained the three, the highest-ranking sports officials arrested in the scandal, in mid-January in a move regarded by analysts and media as the strongest step Beijing had taken so far to clean up the sport.
No details of the trio's cases were provided, but some media have speculated that Nan's case alone could involve several million yuan.
Police had said that this stage of the anti-corruption campaign, backed by top leaders such as President Hu Jintao and Vice-President Xi Jinping, began two years ago when police were made aware that seven Chinese soccer players had been sentenced for match-fixing in Singapore.
Following leads provided by Singapore, mainland police targeted a large number of suspects and launched the crackdown in the middle of last year. The campaign has so far led to the punishment of three soccer clubs. The licence of Qingdao Hailifeng was revoked and the club was fined 200,000 yuan (HK$227,000), and two other teams - Guangzhou Pharmaceutical and the Chengdu Blades - were demoted from the Chinese Super League to the second-tier Jia League.