2 soccer players and a betting agent receive prison terms for match-fixing in Hong Kong

HONG KONG: A Hong Kong court has sentenced two soccer players and a betting agent to up to 17 months in prison for bribery, match-fixing and illegal gambling in a prominent sports scandal.

The two players, Brian Fok and Luciano Silva Da Silva, and the betting agent, Waheed Mohammad, schemed to fix results in the 2022-23 season to win money through illegal gambling, the city’s Independent Commission Against Corruption, which led the investigation, said in a statement Friday.

Their acts included intentionally causing Fok’s team, Happy Valley Athletic Association, and Silva Da Silva’s team, Central and Western District Recreation and Sports Association, to lose matches, or manipulating the number of goals or corner kicks through fraud in the second tier of the Hong Kong league.

The trio also placed illegal bets on more than 30 matches involving their teams based on pre-determined results and match-fixing arrangements, it said.