Mr. Zhangsaid he is aware of how Japanese firms lost large sums on high-profile foreign investments such as Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach Golf Course in the late 1980s and notes that the failures had to do the volatility of the yen and Japan's monetary policy.
In his opening remarks, MrZhang, who is from China, said it was time to "admit that match-fixing is a real danger to football's ethical values and needs to be eliminated to preserve the sanctity of the sport".
Mr. Zhang's lighter sentence was also expected because prosecutors said he was an accomplice, and Ms. Gu the main culprit, according observers during the trial.