Pakistan Cricket Team Match Fixing Scandal Continues at Southwark Crown Court, London
Story by George Oborne on 2011-10-12 14:20:44
SOUTHWARK, LONDON-Further news has emerged regarding the case of Pakistan Cricketers Salman Butt, Muhammad Asif and Mohammed Aamer.
The trio are currently on trial at Southwark Crown Court in South London regarding allegations that they took part in match fixing during Pakistan's tour of England this summer. The three players are accused of deliberately throwing no balls in return for money.
Meanwhile Mazhar Majeed, 36, has pleaded guilty to asking for $1.2 million in return for getting Pakistan cricketers to throw a test match against England. Majeed, who was framed by News of the World journalist Mazher Mahmood, told the court that Australian cricketers had also been involved in match fixing and claimed that such activities were rampant in international cricket.
Majeed explained that the Twenty20 cricket games were the easiest to fix and that certain members of the Pakistan cricket were easy to influence as they were unhappy at being captained by Shahid Afridi. Players were therefore happy to throw games in the hope that Salman Butt would be instated as captain.
Majeed is said to have set up a number of Swiss bank accounts on behalf of the Pakistani cricketers. He is then said to have used his ownership of the football team Croydon Athletic as well as an ice cream company he owns to channel money made through match fixing into their accounts.
Court prosecutor, Aftab Jafferjee, described the amounts of money involved in these illegal betting rings as 'simply breathtaking' and said that they were fuelled by illegal overseas betting industries. In many Asian countries, gambling is illegal and therefore the betting industry is difficult to regulate, allowing for such corruption to occur.
Majeed and Aamer are being tried separately to Butt and Asif, as the former two have both pleader guilty whilst the latter continue to insist that they are innocent. Butt and Asif have both said that the fact that no balls were delivered at the exact times when Majeed predicted them was purely due to 'freakish occurrences'.
Meanwhile, there has been a certain degree of sympathy for Mohammed Aamer. Aamer was just 18 years old at the time of the spot fixing and was tipped to become a great player on the international stage. He had won the award of 'player of the series' the day before the allegations were published in the British tabloid. The court has noted that it might have been difficult for Aamer to withstand pressure from senior players to involve himself in the match fixing.
Aamer's contract stated that if he was approached by someone asking him to fix a match then he should report such matters to his team captain. Ironically, it was his team captain, Salman Butt, who had approached him. Clearly, for an uneducated young man such as Mohammed Aamer, it must have been difficult to decide what to do.
The case continues at Southwark Crown Court, London.