Man who was part of cricket bribe trio is jailed after 'undermining integrity of sporting contest’

Tuesday 18th February 2020 17:05 EST
 

Three men - including one from Slough - who conspired to offer bribes to professional cricket players had "undermined public confidence in the integrity of the sporting contest", a judge said.

Pakistan international bastman Nasir Jamshaid, 33, Yousef Anwar, 36, of Littlebrook Avenue, and Mohammed Ijaz, 34, were arrested last February as part of a National Crime Agency probe into alleged spot-fixing.

An undercover police officer infiltrated the network by posing as a member of a corrupt betting syndicate. His work led to an attempted fix in the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) towards the end of 2016 being revealed, as well as an actual fix in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) in February 2017.

In both cases, an opening batsman in the Twenty20 tournaments had agreed to not score runs from the first two balls of an over in return for a share of an overall £30,000 fee.

Jamshaid, from Walsall, was the target of bribery in the Bangladesh "two dot ball" plan which was eventually called off. He then turned perpetrator as a go-between and encouraged other players to spot-fix at a PSL fixture between Islamabad United and Peshawar Zalmi in Dubai on February 9.

Jailing all three men at Manchester Crown Court on Friday, Judge Richard Mansell QC said the fixers, Anwar and Ijaz, both from Sheffield, had engaged in "sophisticated and organised criminal activity" while Jamshaid was "vulnerable to succumbing to the temptation of financial reward".

Anwar, who played the most prominent role, was jailed for 40 months, Ijaz was sentenced to 30 months in custody and Jamshaid was imprisoned for 17 months.

The court heard a corrupt betting syndicate could make hundreds of thousands of pounds from such spot-fixes by placing fraudulent in-play bets, safe in the knowledge they were almost certain to win.

The undercover operative had been introduced to Anwar, who was suspected of involvement in bribery and match-fixing in international cricket.


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