Torpedo was launched: the RFU expelled the club from the RPL for attempting to bribe the referee

The Control and Disciplinary Committee of the Russian Football Union (RFU KDK) has excluded Torpedo Moscow from the list of participants in the upcoming season of the Russian Premier League (RPL). The reason was an attempt to influence one of the referees of the matches of the spring part of the last draw of the Russian championship among the teams of the first league, as a result of which Avtozavodtsy reached the RPL. This is the first time in the history of our football when a club is removed from the top division due to corruption. Previously, this happened only at the first and second league levels.

Arrest of managers

In the official wording of its decision, the KDC referred to part 2 of Article 124.2 of the RFU disciplinary regulations. And he cited an attempt to arrange match-fixing in football competitions as the reason for sanctions against Torpedo. It was about three black-and-white home games of the spring part of the season in the first league — on March 22 against Moscow Rodina (0:0), on April 21 against Yekaterinburg Ural (1:1) and on May 11 against Yaroslavl Shinnik (1:0).

As a result, it was decided to suspend the club from the RPL competitions of the 2025/2026 season, to fine 5 million rubles, its co-founder Leonid Sobolev was banned from working in football for the next five years, and former CEO Valery Skorodumov for the next 10 years. Both functionaries have been in jail since June.

Then they were detained by law enforcement agencies on suspicion of trying to bribe the referee Maxim Perezva, who worked on all three of the above-mentioned Torpedo matches in the first league. Interestingly, in only one meeting with his refereeing, Avtozavodtsy won. And in the game with Ural, according to a number of experts, Perezva even made mistakes against Torpedo players.

However, the very fact of an attempt to influence the arbitrator according to the rules is a reason for sanctions. So far, no one has officially announced what evidence base has been collected regarding Sobolev and Skorodumov's contacts with Perezva and attempts to bribe him, as investigative actions are still ongoing. But the RFU KDK confidently applied sanctions against the club.

At the same time, the meeting of the disciplinary committee was held in an extremely closed format. In particular, none of the members of this body spoke about the decision, and the RFU did not hold a press conference for the chairman of the KDK, Artur Grigoryants, who previously always spoke to the media with detailed explanations after each high-profile meeting.

Formally, Torpedo may try to appeal the decision to the RFU Appeal Committee, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne (CAS) may become the final instance. After the KDK meeting, Sergei Sinyaev, who replaced Skorodumov as CEO in June, said that the club would decide in the next few days whether to appeal.

It is worth noting that Torpedo has avoided a complete ban and will be able to compete in the first league next season. Initially, the rules also included the option of suspending the club from participating in all professional competitions.

"This is a real tragedy for the club, its fans and veterans," Alexander Tukmanov, former president of Torpedo and ex—CEO of the Russian Football Federation, told Izvestia. — It is always difficult to accept a situation when a scandal of such magnitude breaks out around a team, which leads to exclusion from the tournament, which the players fought their way to. Is this decision of the RFU KDC justified? I have a two-fold attitude towards this. On the one hand, the RFU most likely had materials, information from the investigative authorities, on the basis of which such a harsh decision was made. On the other hand, the degree of guilt is determined by the court. There is no court decision yet. Even the investigation into Sobolev and Skorodumov has not ended. If a person is guilty, and this is proven by the court, then punishment is necessary. But Sobolev and Skorodumov have not yet been found guilty. Accordingly, sanctions against the club are premature. The RFU found itself in a difficult position. Apparently, he had to make an urgent decision, since there were less than two weeks left before the start of the new championship.

Effects

The club that will replace Torpedo in the RPL will be determined in the coming days by the decision of the RFU Executive Committee bureau. Most likely, the choice will be in favor of Orenburg, which was eliminated from the Premier League last season. However, Ural also has a desire to go up, finishing fourth in the first league and losing the transition matches to Akhmat Grozny." (2:1; 0:2). The president of the Yekaterinburg club, Grigory Ivanov, did not rule out that he would file a lawsuit with the CAS in case his team was not allowed to join the RPL. Earlier, the RFU Secretary General Maxim Mitrofanov said that Torpedo could be removed from the tournament after the start of the championship. Then there would be 15 teams playing in the RPL next year, instead of 16, as usual. And no one would replace the "car factory workers".

Meanwhile, earlier this week, RBC published information about the detention of another referee who refereed the Torpedo match in the first league. We are talking about Bogdan Golovko, who worked on the game of the last 34th round of the championship between Avtozavodtsam and KAMAZ from Naberezhnye Chelny. Then, at home, black and white barely achieved a 1-1 draw, which they needed to advance to the RPL.

On Thursday, the head of the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Irina Volk, confirmed the initiation of a criminal case into the Golovko episode. According to her, the Torpedo managers, through an intermediary, transferred funds in the amount of 1.5 million rubles to the chief referee of the match with KAMAZ for illegally influencing the outcome of the game. Searches were conducted in the homes of the chief referee of the match and the mediator, as a result of which communications equipment and other items of evidentiary value were seized. The suspects were detained and charged with a crime under Article 184 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The judge was placed under house arrest, and the mediator was released on his own recognizance.

During the meeting, Golovko made a number of controversial decisions. In particular, the Expert and Judicial Commission (ESC) The RFU officially recognized the erroneous failure to assign a penalty to the Torpedo goal in the first half. The Golovko episode was not dealt with at the last meeting of the RFU KDC, as well as during the work of the special commission at the KDC, on the basis of which the decision was made.

It is possible that in the future the Golovko case will also be dealt with by the RFU. As for the fate of Torpedo, Andrei Alyoshkin, Sobolev's lawyer, said the other day that the team would be disbanded if it was suspended, and the new stadium under construction next to Avtozavodskaya metro station would be given to the youth team.

Meanwhile, Sobolev is not the only founder of the club. The team is also owned by businessmen Nikolai Storozhuk and Vladimir Kozhaev, who are mainly involved in the reconstruction of the stadium. In early July, Sergei Sinyaev told Izvestia that they had helped secure the club's financing for the RPL season, even after Sobolev's detention.

"The RFU's decision is fair," says former Spartak owner Andrei Chervichenko. — As far as I know, law enforcement agencies have provided the football leadership with sufficient evidence of illegal actions by Torpedo managers. The RFU had to make an emergency decision. There was no other way out. I hope that, following the club's leaders, the authorities will take over the referees. So that no one would be discouraged from doing such things. Perhaps more than one Torpedo is doing this. And we need to check other clubs and referees for such corruption. But it's good that there is already a precedent. This gives us a chance to purify our football and progress it.

Earlier in the history of Russian football, there were two cases of sanctions against clubs by the football authorities for corruption. In 1996, the Professional Football League (PFL), which was then holding competitions in all divisions, excluded Vladikavkaz's Iriston from the second league after attempting to bribe a Dynamo St. Petersburg football player to hand over a match.

And in 2019, the RFU downgraded the Chaika club from the village of Peschanokopskoye in the Rostov region. Then the team won the second league and reached the first one. But soon her match with Novorossiysk Chernomorets was recognized as contractual. And the Seagull was sent back to the second league.