The county court's panel of judges accepted the plea bargain between the USKOK and the three men believed to have organised betting fraud -- Vinko Saka, Dino Lalic and Admir Suljic.

Lawyer Kresimir Krsnik said that his client Admir Suljic, a Slovenian national, was given a prison sentence of one year and agreed to pay back the illegally gained money. According to Krsnik, Suljic already served his prison term as he spent one year in pre-trial custody.

According to unofficial reports, Saka, who used to be a coach of Dinamo soccer players under the age of 21, and Lalic were also sentenced to one year in prison and pledged to return illegally gained money.

Those three men are expected to pay back one million euros on the aggregate.

Two soccer players who pleaded guilty are Danijel Madjaric and Mario Darmopil, as did Darmopil's manager Mario Marenic.

Darmopil was given eight months in prison and has to pay back EUR 20,500. Madjeric was sentenced to seven months in prison and has to pay back EUR 6000, while Marenic was given a suspended sentence of 14 months with four years' probation and is expected to pay back EUR 4,500.

The Croatian police launched the Offside investigation in late 2009 after receiving information from German police about match fixing and related betting scams in Croatia. A broad international investigation was launched in late 2009 after German police arrested 15 people, including the Croatian-born brothers Ante and Milan Sapina, of Berlin, who had been convicted for match fixing in Germany in 2005.

The European football governing body UEFA said at the time that most of the 200 suspicious matches concerned nine European football leagues and that 14 Croatian First Division matches were suspicious as well.