Vietnam: Opportunity to get rid of corruption

Authorities have managed to gather evidence of football corruption in Vietnam following the arrest of two officials but a senior official has called it merely the tip of an iceberg, Vietnam's youth organisation newspaper, Thanhnien News reported.

Vu Hang, a member of the Vietnam Football Federation and vice chief of the national football organization board, said the list of corrupt officials involved in fixing important games was long and did not end with the officials arrested a week ago.

A police source said that the list of offenders was obtained from the two notebooks belonging to Luong Trung Viet who has admitted to bribing officials.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter surprised a Vietnamese football delegation in Switzerland when he asked about the scandal, said Tran Quoc Tuan, General Secretary of the VFF. According to the president, the two recent arrests had given the federation a golden opportunity to rid itself of corruptions, Tuan said.

The VFF could become a good example for other federations to follow, and more importantly, Vietnam’s football would grow much stronger if all corruptions were punished justly, Tuan quoted Blatter as saying.

See also: V-League and police crack-down on match-fixing.