Sports Agent Mazhar Majeed paid Mohammad Asif £65,000 to stop him switching to a rival match-fixing ring. Mohammad Asif, 28, received the money at the request of other players in his national side who feared he might be tempted to start working for another crooked gambling syndicate, London’s Southwark Crown Court was told. It was also alleged in court that Salman Butt teamed up with another mystery player to organise rigging of parts of games during last summer’s tour of England. Fixer Mazhar Majeed paid £2,500 of the money to Amir, £10,000 to Butt and £65,000 to Asif, and planned to give them more in the future, the court heard. Explaining why Asif was paid so much more than his team-mates, Majeed’s barrister Mark Milliken-Smith QC said: “The larger amount was paid in order to ensure that that player remained, as it were, loyal to these people, the players within the dressing room, rather than to others by whom he might be tempted.”
The entire series was fixed?
The ICC is set to launch its own investigation into Pakistan’s 2010 tour of England following indications of more tainted matches during the spot-fixing trial in London. During the course of the trial recovered text messages revealed that four more Tests appear to have been affected by spot-fixing on the tour. There were also suggestions that other Pakistan players in the squad that toured England last year may also be involved in some wrongdoing, according to a report on Espncricinfo. The ACSU could not conduct a thorough inquiry into the spot-fixing scandal against the three Pakistani players as most or all of the evidence was held by the Crown and police. But after the trial is over, there will be a debriefing between British prosecution services and the ACSU on what all can be disclosed to use in the investigations, the report said. Evidence was also found for the Lord’s Test between Pakistan and Australia, while a text was also recovered by the Canadian police specialists from alleged bookie Mazhar Majeed’s mobile phone that connected Pakistan players — Kamran Akmal and Aamir – to alleged spot-fixing and links with bookmakers.
Tip off from Pakistan camp?
Mazher Mahmood, the News of the World journalist who exposed the fixing racket, said that his anonymous source was a former member of the Pakistan cricket management team. Mahmood, known as the Fake Sheikh, received the tip off in January 2010 – and took eight months to plan his sting on Mazhar Majeed and the ring of corrupt cricketers. The Metropolitan Police had also received a tip off during last summer, but equally had not launched a full investigation by the time the tabloid broke the story. Mahmood, known as the Fake Sheikh, admitted that he received a download of text messages from Majeed’s Blackberry phone – which provided damning evidence he was trying to rig games.