Singapore national Rajendran S/O R. Kurusamy has been sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on three separate charges of match-fixing relating to the 28th South East Asian (SEA) Games. Kurusamy was firstly charged with ‘engaging in a conspiracy’ with three others to pay Orlando Marques Henriques Mendes, a Technical Director of the Timor Leste (East Timor) football team, S$15,000 (€9,500) in return for the team losing its SEA Games match against Malaysia,

Secondly, he was charged with ‘being a party to a criminal conspiracy by agreeing to corruptly offer bribes’ to members of the Timor Leste team to lose the same match, announced Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) today. Thirdly, he was charged with giving Mendes S$1,000 (€633) as an advance inducement to lose the match.

As reported by the Sports Integrity Initiative in July, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) suspended Mendes in relation to his detention by Singapore’s authorities. Kurusamy was jailed for 27 months in 1997 for attempting to bribe players in Singapore’s top division, the S-League. He is a former associate of convicted match-fixer Wilson Raj Perumal.