Pakistan cricketers guilty of corruption

Pakistan cricket player Salman Butt was found guilty Tuesday of plotting to cheat and to take bribes in a major international competition against England last summer, a British crown court said.
Another player, Mohammad Asif, was also found guilty of conspiracy to cheat, in a scandal that rocked the international sport.

The jury is still deliberating on whether he plotted to to take bribes.
The Pakistanis were accused of spot-fixing, which involves deliberately throwing parts of a game, rather than the whole match.

Prosecutors accused both men of taking part in a betting scam, allegedly arranged by Mazhar Majeed, during a match between Pakistan and England played at the Lord's cricket ground in London.

The News of the World, the British tabloid that first reported the allegations, said players deliberately bowled "no balls," or fouls, at specific points in the game and that the alleged ringleader made 150,000 pounds (about $230,000) in the scam.

The News of the World has since folded in an unrelated scandal.
Prosecutors used audio and video recordings the newspaper made secretly last year involving Majeed, a 36-year-old businessman from London.

In one, Majeed is heard telling an unknown contact it is "not a problem" to fix the result of a match, adding: "Boss, you know how many [players] I have got, you know that they do it."
The jury also heard a series of audio and video recordings of conversations and meetings between Majeed and a reporter from the newspaper, who was posing as a rich Indian businessman. One of the recordings showed the reporter handing over $140,000 in a London hotel room that had been fitted with secret cameras.

Majeed is heard to give the reporter precise details of events in the match, due to start the following day, that would be rigged by the Pakistani players. Specifically, he describes three no-balls -- illegal deliveries -- that the Pakistani bowlers would concede at particular points in the match.

The price of fixing a no-ball, Majeed was heard to say, is $10,000; he went on to tell the undercover reporter that his contact in India made four to five times that amount by betting on no-balls.
The jury was then shown extended clips from the Lord's match, during which the Pakistani bowlers did exactly as Majeed had promised. Before one of the no-balls, the cameras even showed Butt, who was captaining the Pakistani team, consult with the bowler, Mohammed Amir.

Earlier in the trial, the jury was told the betting market in the Asian subcontinent is "breathtaking in size." Conservative estimates, the prosecution said, puts the value of the market at between $40 to $50 billion dollars per year.

Alan Peacock, an anti-corruption official at the International Cricket Council, told the court that the betting market had developed over the years from a focus on fixing match results, to spot-fixing: contriving small events within the game, like no balls, or particular patterns of scoring.
Asif and Butt denied the charges.

Majeed and Amir are not on trial; the jury was told there is "nothing sinister" about this apparent inconsistency.