Stephen Fleming was offered £300Â 000 by an Indian sports promoter to join an international match-fixing syndicate, the New Zealand cricket captain says in a book to be released this week.
Fleming said the approach was made at a Leicester, England, hotel during the 1999 World Cup. Some of the details of the book were released on Monday.
”He’d pay me £200Â 000 straight up, then another £100Â 000 in a year’s time,” Fleming says in the book Balance of Power, written by journalist Richard Boock.
”I remember looking at the numbers he’d written down and saying, ‘Look, I don’t think we should be talking about this. I don’t really want to be part of this at all.”’
Fleming said he told New Zealand team manager John Graham of the approach and gave a statement to Scotland Yard detectives, who flew to New Zealand in 2000.
Former England all-rounder Chris Lewis also claimed to have been offered £300Â 000 to influence the outcome of a Test against New Zealand. The bookmaker involved denies having made the offer.
The bookmaker, who is identified by Fleming in his book, claimed an ability to influence a wide range of sports events, Fleming said.
”He said: ‘If you want to know where the real money is, it’s in the syndicate that’s going on around the world right now, speculating on the likelihood of certain results of occurrences’.”
”He said there were top athletes involved, and did I notice that Manchester United had been upset the other day . . . He said ‘look those things are not coincidences.’. I said, ”Really?”. – Sapa-AP