Taipei - A Taiwan sports official said Thursday that the island's professional baseball league would not fold over the latest match-fixing scandal.

"Professional baseball is the locomotive of the baseball sport in Taiwan so we will not let the professional baseball league fold," Tzeng Tsan-pao, deputy director of the Sports Affairs Council, said in parliament.

Lee Wen-pin, secretary-general of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL), also said he was not aware of plans to shut the CPBL.

"We will continue to prepare for next year's games. Regarding if some teams might dissolve due to the scandal, I cannot speak for them," he told reporters.

The CPBL was founded in 1989 and now has four teams. In recent years, it has been mired in several match-fixing scandals, and has been hit by low stadium attendance and Taiwan's poor performance in international games, especially the humiliating loss to China in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The latest match-fixing scandal broke out Monday and prosecutors have questions more than a dozen players from three teams, but no one has been indicted yet.

Press reports said the match-fixing began in May, with gangsters paying players up to 3 million Taiwan dollars (90,000 US dollars) for throwing games. (dpa)