A footballer and two Asian businessmen including a Sri Lankan have been jailed for plotting to fix the results of English lower league matches.

Michael Boateng, 22, was found guilty along with businessmen Chann Sankaran and Krishna Ganeshan of conspiracy to commit bribery following a four-week trial at Birmingham crown court.

Singaporean Sankaran, 34, and Sri Lankan-born Ganeshan, 44, labelled in court as "the controlling minds" behind efforts to influence the outcome of matches in League Two and the Conference South, were jailed for five years each.

Boateng, a former defender with Conference South club Whitehawk FC, was sentenced to 16 months for his role in the plot.

Sentencing the trio, Judge Melbourne Inman QC said: "Professional football and sport play an important part in national life and individuals' lives in this country.
"Those who make determined attempts to destroy its integrity for personal gain must expect significant prison sentences so when such acts are discovered a clear signal is sent to others."

The judge told Sankaran he would be liable to deportation back to his home country once he had served his sentence, but it would be a matter for the home secretary.
He told the co-conspirators that their scheme was laid bare by surveillance and covertly recorded conversations following an investigation initially by the Daily Telegraph and later the National Crime Agency.

To Ganeshan and Sankaran, he said: "I am satisfied you were at the head of this conspiracy; you two were the controlling minds.

"The two of you came to this country in November last year for the sole reason of visiting clubs to find players you could corrupt to fix matches."

He said they had clearly targeted lower division football clubs because the cost of bribing the players "on their modest wages" was cheaper than approaching players from the higher leagues.

"This was an, if not sophisticated, then well-planned and determined conspiracy motivated by the expectation of significant gain."

Judge Inman said it was sad to see Boateng, who it was heard had been a valued church and charity group youth worker in London, before the court.

His barrister, Denis Barry, told the judge that children in the south London community where he volunteered felt badly let down by a man they had seen as a role model.
"He has lost his good name in the community," he said.

The co-conspirators had denied trying to throw the results of football matches, including the game between AFC Wimbledon and Dagenham Redbridge on 26 November last year, in order to make money from bets placed on the outcomes.

When Ganeshan and Sankaran arrived in the UK earlier that month, they immediately set about building what the NCA described as "a network of corrupt players in the UK".

There is no evidence that the outcome of the match was ever thrown.

But, in a conversation recorded in November last year, Ganeshan was heard telling a contact in Singapore: "I want to start making money, my pocket is empty."
He would later tell the same contact he was expecting to make sums of "75,000 to 100,000", of which the judge said "whether euros, US dollars or pounds, it's a significant amount of money".

Meanwhile, Sankaran had what the judge called a "bogus contract" relating to a Finnish club, and pretended he was an agent in a bid to get footballers to contact him.
Ganeshan had also set up a company called Matchworld Sports Ltd with an address in London's prestigious Mayfair, for which business cards were printed, but that had never traded and never paid its rent.

Judge Inman said: "All this was simply there, clothing what you were doing with apparent respectability. Your only interest was luring footballers in advancing your plan."
The men were snared by their own mouths, as the judge put it, after the NCA bugged their hotel rooms, listening in on their conversations.

It also sent in an undercover agent posing as the scheme's UK investor who handed the businessmen €60,000 (£47,000), which they then spent on bribes and placing bets.

The two men would later hand €450 to Boateng, who was then playing for Brighton-based Whitehawk FC.

The judge said the case showed that all professional clubs, including non-league sides, needed to be "extremely vigilant" that what he labelled the poison of match-fixing corruption did not affect them.

On Tuesday, jurors were discharged from reaching a verdict on a fifth man, the ex-Whitehawk footballer Moses Swaibu, after deliberating for more than 15 hours.
Swaibu, 25, of Tooley Street, Bermondsey, south London, denies a single count of conspiracy and was granted unconditional bail pending a retrial.(The Guardian)