14 Mar 2013

New body to fight match fixing in Korea

11:55 am on 14 March 2013

The South Korean government says it will set up a separate supervisory body to curb the menace of match-fixing, which has plagued professional sports in the Asian country.

Basketball is the latest game to be mired in a match-fixing scandal in Korea with a top coach being arrested for allegedly rigging matches during the previous season.

The government says it will double the financial reward for the reporting match-fixing and will also ask leagues to reduce grants to teams implicated in rigging.

South Korean sport has been hit hard by match-fixing in recent years with incidents in football, volleyball and baseball forcing the government to take a hard-line stance on the issue.

Seoul also threatened to shut down the country's top flight football league after 41 players were banned in January following investigations that revealed widespread corruption.