Tainan prosecutors to monitor baseball games for rigging

Starting Friday, a group of 17 prosecutors from the Tainan District Prosecutors Office, who are also lovers of the baseball game, will take turns to lead local police to monitor the games and collect evidence if they think there are signs of rigging, said Lin Chih-feng, a chief prosecutor.

It would be the first time ever that prosecutors would be openly monitoring professional baseball games in a bid to stem crime.

However, only games at the baseball stadiums in Tainan will be monitored, Lin said.

Professional baseball game rigging and related underground gambling have been rampant over the past two decades since Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) was launched in 1990.

Over the years, some coaches and players have been detained and indicted for game rigging. In some cases, the coach instructed the pitcher and the other players on the team how to play in order to produce game results in line with the team owner's plan. This allowed underground gambling rings to net huge winnings from their bets.

The accused were usually indicted on charges of fraud, breach of trust and organized crime, the prosecutors said.

In the past, some prosecutors and police units sporadically monitored professional baseball games, but did so using undercover methods, Lin said.

Taiwan was the sixth nation in the world to establish a professional baseball league, following the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Mexico, in that order.

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