Corruption in soccer

Life imprisonment for China’s ex-football association chief!

Chen Xuyuan must go behind bars.(Bild: APA/AFP/Huangshi Intermediate People‘s Court/Handout)

The former chairman of the Chinese Football Association, Chen Xuyuan, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption. As the state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday, three other officials who had also accepted bribes were also sentenced to prison.

A court in the central Chinese province of Hubei justified the sentence against Chen on the grounds that he had used his various offices between 2010 and 2023 to influence project awards and accept bribes and valuables worth more than 81 million yuan (around 10.4 million euros) in return. Chen had "seriously violated the order of fair competition" and "caused enormous damage to soccer in China", the court ruled.

Indictment in September
In mid-February 2023, it became known that a disciplinary commission was investigating the then president of the soccer association. Chen was charged in September. In the months following the investigation against him, other officials were targeted by the investigators. On Tuesday, the former officials Dong Zheng, Chen Yongliang, Yu Hongchen and Liu Lei were sentenced. They were sentenced to prison terms of between two and a half and 14 years.

The corruption scandal is a setback for the football-loving head of state and party leader Xi Jinping's goal of turning the People's Republic into a great soccer nation. So far, China has only qualified for the World Cup once. Chinese soccer is repeatedly confronted with allegations of corruption.