The lawyer ruled out the connection of the owner of Torpedo with the detention of arbitrator Golovko

The detention of football referee Bogdan Golovko is not related to the owner of the Torpedo club Leonid Sobolev. Alexander Dobrovinsky, Sobolev's lawyer, told Izvestia on July 9.

Earlier that day, Golovko was detained for illegally influencing the results of the Russian Football Championship. According to the investigation, he intentionally made mistakes in favor of Torpedo Moscow several times during the match against FC KAMAZ (Naberezhnye Chelny) on May 24. The result decided which clubs would enter the Russian Premier League.

Dobrovinsky noted that there are no grounds for detention in the charges against Sobolev, since his involvement in match-fixing has not been proven. According to him, it has also not been proven that a contractual match took place. He stressed that the investigation should find out.

"If he (Golovko — Ed.) made a mistake, as did, for example, [referees Sergey] Karasev, [Maxim] Perezva and other referees, when the RFU refereeing commission found out that a penalty should have been awarded, but by mistake they did not indicate the eleven—meter mark, this is different. Then he was detained in vain. In any case, we must wait for the investigation to end and the court to pass a verdict," the lawyer added.

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Earlier, on June 20, law enforcement officers detained Leonid Sobolev, the owner of FC Torpedo. On the same day, it was reported that a criminal case had been opened against him, as well as the director of Torpedo, Valery Skorodumov, who, according to preliminary data, tried to bribe the judge. It was noted that the defendants allegedly offered the chief referee over 1 million rubles for winning the match, awarding penalties to opponents or removing their player.