SOUTH KOREA -- If The Lightman Group from the popular American TV series Lie to Me was real, they would have had a field day in South Korea's K-League.
That's because officials of the Asian nation's football federation have now resorted to lie detector tests in an attempt to purge the sports of the scandals that hounded it after 15 matches were discovered to have been fixed. The scandals, which tainted the sport, have also led to lifetime bans of several football players.
More than 70 players, gambling brokers, and other individuals have already been charged by prosecutors allegedly for participating in rigging matches. Other players have also been prosecuted for betting on the matches that they knew were fixed. The government has also threatened the shut down of the league, Asia's longest running professional football league, should game-fixing continue.
To deter players from accepting payments to make mistakes during games, the K-League has also doubled the minimum annual wage of players to US$ 22,670.
Source: The Independent
Posted: July 13, 2011
