A referee will pay dearly for having ordered a non-existent penalty to be favored. The referee Srdjan Obradovic has been sentenced to 15 months in prison and ten years of disqualification for abusing the position, by favoring during a First Division match in May 2018, Spartak Subotica in their match against Radnicki Nis.
The first instance judgment, which can be appealed, was handed down by the Anti-Corruption Chamber of the High Court of Novi Sad (north), reported the Serbian news agency Tanjug.
The story goes back to 2018. The victory in the match of the penultimate day of the Serbian Super League played on May 13, 2018 in Subotica, between the Spartak and the Radnicki, had to lead to one of the two teams to finish classified as third in the League, synonymous with playing the upcoming Europa League.
The Spartak took that match 2-0 after two penalties, one of them then qualified by the sports press as “scandalous”, and playing in numerical superiority, since one of the forwards of the rival team was sent off.
The police questioned the referee after the game because his performance raised suspicions of a possible fix and his testimony was used to report him to the prosecution.