Taipei  - Taiwan prosecutors' offices will protect baseball teams which are mired in the latest match-fixing scandal, the sports minister said Wednesday.

Tai Hsia-ling, minister of the Sports Affairs Council, said it was decided at a recent ministry-level meeting that prosecutors' offices will "adopt" all four teams of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL), now hit by the latest match-fixing scandal

"Although the four teams have not promised to take part in next year's season, our ministry's determination to save the pro league remains unchanged," she told the parliament.

"But as baseball is a commercial activity, its fate lies in the hands of enterprises (which run baseball teams). The ministry will try its best to communicate (so that enterprises will adopt baseball teams,)" she added.

However, the minister said the roots of the match-fixing are, among others, the lack of a free agent system and low salaries.

According to press reports, the Shihlin district prosecutors' office in Taipei will look after the Brother Elephants team, while other prosecutors' offices will adopt the remaining three teams.

"The adoption is to allow the prosecutors' office to protect players by launching investigations when there are signs of match-fixing and by teaching players to abide by the law," Yen Nai-wei, spokesman for the Shihlin Prosecutors' Office, told reporters.

This "adoption" means only that the prosecutors' offices will form an alliance with the baseball teams by exchanging information with the teams to avoid illegal activities like match fixing, a CPBL press officer clarified.

It does not involve financial sponsorship, he added.

The latest match-fixing scandal erupted last week when prosector's of Taipei's Panicao district began to question players from three CPBL teams.

The match-fixing, directed by criminals who ran illegal betting, began in May, with bookmakers offering players up to 3 million Taiwan dollars (90,000 US dollars) for throwing a game, press reports said.

As of Wednesday, 14 players had been named as defendants. Six of them pleaded guilty to accepting money from gambling rings and of those six, four have handed over the bribes to prosecutors, the Central News Agency quoted an unnamed prosecutor as saying.

The case has dealt a new blow to Taiwan's national sport which has been plagued by match-fixing scandals, low stadium attendance and poor performance in international competitions.

Last year, the Media T-Rex team disbanded over match-fixing allegations implicating the team's management and three players.

A 1996 match-fixing scandal scandal led to the dissolving of the China Times Eagles team. (dpa)