43 people banned by China's Football Association for match fixing
China's Football Association has banned 43 people for life over allegations of match-fixing and other forms of corruption in the latest effort to weed out graft in the country's notoriously underperforming team sport.
The official Xinhua News Agency on Tuesday reported that Zhang Xiaopeng, a top police official, attended a news conference at Dalian to release details of a "two-year investigation that uncovered a series of online gambling, match-fixing and bribery cases."
Xinhua said 120 matches in domestic leagues, 128 criminal suspects, and 41 clubs were implicated in the investigation. Of those banned, 38 were players and five were officials working for various clubs.
Former Chinese internationals Jin Jingdao, Guo Tianyu, and Gu Chao were among those to receive life bans from the sport.
Other players and officials were given shortened bans, including foreign players lured to China by the promise of high salaries.
South Korean Son Jun-ho, who played for China's Shandong Taishan F