Scandal at the Philippine Pro Starcraft League (PPSL)

Gus Ledesma (crouching), the man taking the heat behind the PPSL debacle.

Gus Ledesma, also known as AZK.WitchDoc, is currently entangled in a series of scandals after his involvement in a poorly organized Starcraft II tournament a few days ago at the Glorietta Activity Center in Makati. He branded himself as the CEO of Team AZK and promoted the Philippine Pro Starcraft League (PPSL) at TeamLiquid last June.

Ledesma managed to get the support of IGN Pro League (IPL) to sponsor the event and used it as a regional qualifier. Despite the preparations, when the PPSL finally kicked off last November 7:

A disaster ensued, unfortunately highlighted by start time delay of 9 hours, mediocre stream quality, computers that were even unable to run StarCraft 2, a lack of soundproof booths for the players, over 30 minutes of delays in between each match and terrible sound quality that consistently cut out throughout the broadcast.

IGN Pro League issued an apology a day after the event:

I just wanted to take some time to apologize for what happened last night on our stream. We should have taken better care in selecting a partner in South East Asia to run our qualifiers with. We received assurances that ended up not panning out and we ended up going along with it due to the venue's short timetable for testing availability. We should have screened the quality of the event more intensely. Our intent was to help StarCraft 2 gain popularity across the globe, and we should have done our jobs better. What we thought was going to be something that progresses the scene in SEA has actually done the opposite. [more]

Gus Ledesma's alleged irregularities include the disappearance of sponsorship money and match-fixing. Check out Technogra.ph for the complete story.

(Photo from ESFIWorld.com)