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Police raids Taekwondo body over alleged match-fixing

March 6, 2014

(Yonhap) — Police in Korea on Friday raided the office of the taekwondo governing body as part of an ongoing investigation into allegations that it had fixed matches to benefit selected players.

The Korea Taekwondo Association (KTA) is under suspicion of rigging the results by coercing referees to make favorable decisions for the selected players during national team tryouts so that they can take the spot in the team. A team of investigators from the National Police Agency (NPA) obtained computer hard drives and confidential documents such as accounting books from the two offices in Seoul to corroborate the charges, police said.

The NPA officers said they have also swooped down on the house of a 61-year-old KTA chief, only identified by his surname Yim, for allegedly leading the match-fixing scheme and embezzling government funds. Yim is accused of siphoning off the funds assigned by the Seoul municipal government by cooking the books, the NPA officers added.

The investigation came after the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in January asked the investigators to look into 10 national and regional sports federations, including the KTA, for various alleged corruptions.

After launching a nationwide inspection of nearly 3,000 sports bodies at the national, provincial and municipal levels, the ministry said that it has uncovered 337 different corrupt practices at 493 sports agencies, including accounting fraud, nepotistic hiring of executives and embezzlement.