Tainan prosecutors indicted five professional baseball players and Tainan County Council Speaker Wu Chien-bao (吳健保) on Tuesday for fixing professional baseball games.
The indictment said that beginning in 2005, Wu allegedly ran an illegal gambling business that punters would use to bet on professional baseball games.
He allegedly paid former Chinatrust Whales players Tseng Han-chou (曾漢州), Cheng Chang-ming (鄭昌明), Chi Chun-lin (紀俊麟), Chen Chien-wei (陳健偉) and Huang Kwei-yu (黃貴裕) to fix the games they were involved in during April and May of that year.
Prosecutors are seeking a six-year sentence for Wu and six months each for the former players, the indictment sheet said.
Wu did not respond to the ruling.
Chinatrust Whales general manager Lin Min-cheng (林敏政) said that the team would seek compensation from the former players if they are convicted.
“We will seek compensation from them as the team was a victim of their fakery,” Lin said.
The prosecutors’ indictment said that Wu began to enlist the services of the players because the gambling business that he was running had lost a lot of money.
The five players accepted an offer of NT$2 million (US$66,000) for each game they fixed and helped Wu affect the results in five games, it said. Of the five games, three finished in accordance with Wu’s expectations, the indictment said.
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