Fenerbahçe ..Turkish Champion, At Risk of Losing Its Title and Millions of Euros

An ongoing match-fixing investigation has Turkey’s national champion at risk of losing its title, its European qualification and millions of euros

Only a month after winning the national championship, Fenerbahçe moved closer to losing its title, its European qualification and millions of euros in income due to the largest match-fixing investigation in Turkish football history.

Chairman Aziz Yıldırım was brought to court for questioning Thursday afternoon, 12 hours after his fellow club members, vice president Þekip Mosturoðlu and board member İlhan Ekşioğlu, were arrested and sent to the Metris Prison in Istanbul pending trial.
The investigation is not limited to Fenerbahçe, since there are a total of 22 club officials, coaches and players arrested as part of the probe, but the team will suffer the largest amount of damage if found guilty.

Apart from being stripped of its 18th league title, Fenerbahçe will be relegated to the second-tier football league for the first time in history if the Turkish Football Federation rules that the team manipulated the outcome of some of its games. That would result in the obligatory release of some of its international players. Fenerbahçe would only keep three of its foreign players due to Bank Asya League One regulations.

Fenerbahçe’s shares on the Istanbul Stock Exchange have been plummeting since Monday, the first day after the detentions started, and the drop will continue if it is relegated.

The biggest financial hit would come from the approximately 15 million euros that the team would get from playing in the European Champions League.

European football’s governing body, UEFA, will be given a list of European qualified teams from Turkey on July 15, a date that may serve as a deadline for the Turkish federation.

“We are aware that we are short on time,” Turkish Football Federation Chairman Mehmet Ali Aydınlar said.
Earlier this week, Aydınlar announced the federation would decide on the teams involved based on the evidence from the prosecutor’s office, since the investigation may take years, given the slow-paced nature of the Turkish justice system.

“The federation has to decide based on two things, the evidence and its conscientious conviction,” said Zümrüt Yezdani, a lawyer specializing in sports law.

On Wednesday the Istanbul police announced the existence of evidence that 19 games in Turkey’s top two leagues were manipulated last season.

July 7, 2011
SOURCE: Hürriyet Daily News