The Czech Football Association said Monday it had relegated Czech Cup winners MFK Karvina from the top flight and fined them $480,000 over a match-fixing scandal.
MFK Karvina won the Czech Cup for the first time in May, but the historic success was tarnished by a police probe into the club based in the eastern coal-mining city of Karvina.
By winning the Cup, Karvina clinched a spot in the Europa League’s final qualifying round, but UEFA is widely tipped to replace the club.
Czech police charged 32 people in late March in the largest match-fixing crackdown in the history of the EU country of 10.9 million people.
“The FACR Ethics Committee decided to relegate the club from the top league because the disciplinary offence was committed in relation with top flight relegation games,” the FACR said in a statement.
The verdict concerns three top-league games played in 2024.
The FACR also slapped a $145,000 fine on Karvina mayor Jan Wolf, suspected of influencing referees, and banned him from football for 12 years.
It sanctioned five Karvina players with bans and fines worth up to $7,000.
The FACR said the decision was not legitimate yet as it can be appealed.
Karvina, who finished eighth in the 16-team top Czech league last season, will be allowed to play the second division next season, it added.
The scandal is not the first by far in Czech football. In 2024, former deputy FACR head Roman Berbr was handed a three-year sentence, suspended for five years, for embezzlement.
Berbr was found guilty of embezzling a regional football association’s money.
He was detained and indicted alongside 21 people and the Prague-based club Slavoj Vysehrad over match-fixing involving lower-tier competitions.
Former Slavoj Vysehrad sports director Roman Rogoz was sentenced to four years in prison.
Berbr’s wife Dagmar Damkova, the first female referee in the Czech Republic, stepped down from a post on the UEFA referees committee as a result.
Former FACR head Miroslav Pelta was detained in 2017 and then sentenced to six years in prison for manipulating sports subsidies.
The Czech national team are currently playing at the World Cup, where they lost their opening Group A game 2-1 to South Korea.
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