Several high-ranking officials of the Chinese Football Association (CFA) have been detained amid probe into match-fixing in soccer games, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said Wednesday.

Nan Yong and Yang Yimin, vice chairmen of the Chinese Football Association, and Zhang Jianqiang, former director of the association's referee committee, were detained according to the law, the MPS said.

Investigations have revealed that Fan Guangming, an official with the CFA, had been involved in manipulating several domestic A-level league games in 2006 through bribing soccer players, the MPS said.

Since 2009, several soccer officials have been reportedly detained for their involvement in gambling and match-fixing in soccer games.

This has urged China's sports authority to reshuffle the leadership of CFA quickly. Director of the government's soccer administrative center has also been changed.

Police found out that in September 2006, a league team from south China's Guangdong province begged Fan to act as a middleman in bribing its rival team from the eastern province Zhejiang, in order to get a favorable result.

Fan managed to make the "deal", and in the game, the intentional slack of important players of the Zhejiang team finally helped the Guangdong team to win the match by 3:2.

After the match, the Guangdong team paid relevant parties a total of 1.5 million yuan in return, the MPS said.

The MPS announced on Jan. 21 that Nan and Yang had been summoned by the police in the northeastern province of Liaoning to "clarify some facts in several important cases of soccer gambling and match-fixing in domestic league games."

(Xinhua News Agency January 28, 2010)