Pak cricketers received 100,000 pounds taxpayers’ funds for spot-fixing trial defence

London (ANI): Pakistani cricketers Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, who were jailed by a London court for involvement in a spot-fixing scam, were given over 100,000 pounds of taxpayers’ money to fund their legal defence.

According to the Daily Star, the agent at the heart of the ring, Mazhar Majeed, had also received legal aid. Butt and Asif used money from the public purse despite details of their wealth emerging during the trial. Butt was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail, Asif for a year, while Amir was jailed for six months. The spot-fixing controversy centres on allegations that Butt, Asif and Amir took bribes from Majeed to deliberately under-perform at certain times in 2010 Lord’s Test against England. Undercover reporters from News of the World, led by Mazher Mahmood, had secretly video-taped Majeed accepting money and informing the reporters that Asif and Amir would deliberately bowl no-balls at specific points in an over.

This information could have been used by gamblers to place bets.