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Football match-fixing suspect arrested in Italy’

Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble attended a match fixing conference in Malaysia

An international football match-fixing suspect has been arrested in Italy after arriving from Singapore and voluntarily giving himself up, reports from Milan say.

Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble attended a match fixing conference in Malaysia

Italian media have named the suspect as a Slovenian man, Admir Sulic.

Interpol says that the suspect is believed to be linked to a match-fixing organisation based in Singapore.

Investigators have been critical of Singapore for allowing alleged match fixers to live there freely.

Interpol – the international organisation of criminal police – believes that Mr Sulic is linked to a match-fixing group controlled by Singaporean businessman Tan Seet Eng – also known as Dan Tan.

The BBC’s Jonah Fisher in Bangkok said that news of the pending arrest first emerged on Wednesday evening, when Interpol head Ronald Noble told a new conference on match-fixing in Malaysia that a suspect was on his way from Singapore to Milan.

The man – who was not named by Mr Noble – was wanted by Italian police in connection with a scandal which saw several high profile Italian players given bans from football and clubs penalised, Interpol said.

“We will follow the rule of law,” the organisation’s secretary general told reporters in Malaysia. “The hope is that [the suspect] will co-operate with law enforcement and tell us all he knows.”

He defended Singapore and south-east Asian countries from the charge that they had allowed the region to become a hub for international match-fixing.

Mr Noble argued that the European police were not sharing information internationally – leaving the Asians with very little evidence to act on.

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