Romania Detains Football Officials Suspected of Fraud

Romania prosecutors on Monday detained the former chairman of the Professional Football League, LPF, and other six others on suspicion of tax evasion and money laundering in a case related to the sale of match rights to television stations.

Former chairman Dumitru Dragomir was taken into custody for 24 hours, with a proposal to extend the arrest over a month more.

Prosecutors said First League matches for 2011-2013 period were sold to TV stations for unknown amounts of money, and officials used fictitious accounts to hide transactions.

The fraud is believed to be worth some 3 million euro, according to media reports.

Dragomir said that he was innocent of the charges.

This is only the latest case of football corruption in Romania. Last month, eight senior football executives and management figures were jailed for irregularities in the transfer of football players abroad.

According to prosecutors, the irregularities occurred in the international transfers of 12 football players between 1999 and 2005, which cheated the state of 1.7 million euro in taxes while four clubs lost around 10 million euro due to the registry of fictitious sums in the books.

Many football clubs in Romania are debt-ridden and facing insolvency, with staff and players going unpaid for months.

Cases of match fixing and illegall transfers of players were often exposed by the media.