A Lebanese football referee was jailed for six months Tuesday after pleading guilty to accepting free sexual services from a gambling-linked syndicate which offered the bribe as an inducement to rig a match in Singapore.
Ali Sabbagh, 34, was described by a district court judge as the most culpable of three Lebanese football match officials charged with corruption in the city-state.
Assistant referees Ali Eid, 33, and Abdallah Taleb, 37, were each given three-month jail sentences on Monday but were released later in the day for good behaviour and to take into account time they had spent in jail since their arrest in April.
They were to be deported to Lebanon later on Tuesday, their lawyer said.
District judge Low Wee Ping said Sabbagh’s sentence had to be a “multiple” of his assistants because he was the one approached by the syndicate and the one who persuaded the two linesmen to accept the sexual bribe.
“The principle of parity of sentence does not apply to you. You have to be sentenced based on the more aggravating factors in your case,” the judge said.
The three men were arrested and charged on April 4 with corruption for accepting sexual favours in exchange for agreeing to fix an unspecified football match.
The judge said Sabbagh’s sentence took into account his guilty plea and the fact that his acceptance of the bribe did not result in any football match being rigged.
“There was no correlation between the sexual services the three of you received and the football match on the same day,” added the judge.
He was referring to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup tie between Singapore-based Tampines Rovers and India’s East Bengal on April 3 that the three Lebanese referees were slated to officiate.
They were abruptly pulled out before the match and replaced.
Sabbagh, a sports teacher in his country, started sobbing as the judge read the verdict and later thanked him before he was led away in shackles by police officers.
His lawyer earlier told the court that Sabbagh would be the “star prosecution witness” in the case against Eric Ding Si Yang, the Singaporean businessman who allegedly supplied the prostitutes to the trio.
Ding, described by Singaporean media as a nightclub owner who drives an Aston Martin sports car, has also been charged with corruption and is currently out on bail awaiting trial.
State prosecutors said on Monday that Sabbagh was introduced to 31-year-old Ding — who used the alias “James” — in June 2012 at a cafe in Beirut, indicating a “clear international dimension” to the offences.
They said the Lebanese referee expressed his preference for “tall Asian girls” to Ding during one of their meetings.
Ding also told Sabbagh that he would “make more in one year through match fixing than he would as an AFC referee for 10 years”, according to a statement released by the prosecutors.
Singapore has a long history of match-fixing, and syndicates from the wealthy Southeast Asian island have been blamed by European police for orchestrating a network responsible for rigging hundreds of games worldwide.
In February, Singapore came under pressure to act against the cartels, whose activities fuel illegal gambling estimated to be worth billions of dollars, when the head of Interpol called for the arrest of an alleged ringleader.
Singapore police later said the suspect, Tan Seet Eng or Dan Tan, was assisting investigations.
In May, Tan was charged in absentia in Hungary in relation to the alleged manipulation of 32 games across three countries. He is also wanted in Italy in connection with the wide-ranging “calcioscommesse” scandal.
Third Lebanese sex-for-fixing ref jailed in Singapore
