A court in China on Friday jailed former Premier League star and men’s national coach Li Tie for 20 years for bribery.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has waged an unrelenting campaign against deep-seated official corruption since coming to power over a decade ago.
Anti-graft authorities took aim at the sports industry in 2022 and have announced a string of convictions for former football administrators this week.
In the highest-profile case to date, a court in central Hubei province said on Friday that Li had been sentenced to “fixed-term imprisonment of 20 years” after being found guilty of a string of offences relating to giving and receiving bribes.
The 47-year-old is one of China’s biggest football names, serving as national team coach from January 2020 to December 2021, after racking up nearly 100 international caps and playing as a midfielder for English Premier League side Everton.
But state broadcaster CCTV said he used his status as China coach to extract nearly 51 million yuan ($7 million) in bribes in return for selecting players for the national team or helping them sign for clubs.
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Li also “asked others to help him” become the national coach in 2019 and handed the unnamed people one million yuan the following year, AFP reported.
During his tenure at now-defunct Chinese Super League (CSL) side Wuhan Zall, Li also colluded with club chiefs to hand out bribes in an effort to secure the national team job.
The report also listed other accusations that Li and his previous clubs had paid the equivalent of millions of dollars in bribes to seal player transfers and fix match results stretching back to 2015.
A photograph of Li published by CCTV showed the disgraced sportsman in the court dock, wearing a black hooded sweater and flanked by two police officers.
Xi is a self-proclaimed football fan who wants China to host and win the World Cup one day, but the men’s national team has long failed to impress.
FIFA currently ranks China 90th in the world, one place above the tiny Caribbean island of Curacao.
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