The action had taken place in the evening following the defeat of the karabatic club montpellier AHB at paris saint-germain (24:38), reported french media with reference to the police.
Several players of the french national champions from montpellier, in the champions league group opponents of the SG flensburg-handewitt, are suspected of having deliberately lost a match of the french championship last season in order to enable relatives of the players to make high betting profits of up to 250,000 euro. Players involved face up to three years in prison and drastic fines for sports corruption and fraud.
According to media reports, those arrested include karabatic’s brother luka and paris international samuel honrubia, who was still under contract to montpellier last season, as well as a montpellier functionary and the partner of one of the players.
Only on wednesday it had become known that an investigation had been initiated against eight professionals on suspicion of fraud. The affair is about the sensational 28:31 defeat of the french record champion and champions league winner of 2003 on 12. May at the relegation-threatened cesson-rennes HB. Montpellier was already the champion, the later olympic champions nikola karabatic and honrubia were not present due to injury.
Cesson president philippe barberet assured these days, the game in his opinion, everything went right. The wettanbieter francaise des jeux (FDJ) saw it differently. FDJ registered "unusually high bets" on the match in cesson and reported them to the relevant authorities. There had been many and especially high stakes on a half-time pressure and also on a defeat of MAHB, it hewed.
The police, according to the channel "france 3", found out that many bets were made at that time by wives, girlfriends and relatives of the players, as well as by people close to MAHB. Nikola karabatic, france’s athlete of the year 2011, hulled into silence. He was not up to date and surprised by the news, he had told his manager on wednesday.
The scandal made waves in the "grande nation" over the past few days. The head of the national federation FFH, joel delplanque, said he trusted "the boys" but would impose severe penalties if necessary in the sporting field: "there will be zero tolerance," he assured.
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