Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals has reversed a decision from a high criminal court in İstanbul that acquitted former Fenerbahçe chairman Aziz Yıldırım and 35 others of match fixing charges.
The match-fixing scandal became news in the summer of 2011 when Turkish police began an investigation into 19 football matches suspected of being fixed, and by July 10, 61 people had been arrested, including Fenerbahçe Chairman Yıldırım and Turkish national players.
On July 2, 2012, a specially authorized Turkish court convicted and sentenced Yıldırım to six years, three months in prison on match-fixing charges. Then-Fenerbahçe Vice President Şekip Mosturoğlu was sentenced to one year, 10 months and 10 days in prison, and the other vice president of Fenerbahçe was sentenced to one year, two months in prison.
The case was retried in 2015, and the court acquitted all the people who were charged at the beginning of the investigation pending Supreme Court of Appeals’ approval.
Following the top court’s ruling, a retrial will be held for Yıldırım and the other defendants at the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court.
Yıldırım served as Fenerbahçe chairman between 1998 and 2018. He lost the position to Ali Koç in a June 2018 election.