Stay Tuned – I will be releasing fresh revelations later this week.
However, for now, here is a quick fact sheet for people interested in the story developing around the Europol press conference on Monday of this week. At the conference, police investigators announced that they had over 400-suspects and over 680 suspicious matches.
Most journalists have played the story straight and simply announced these findings, however, there has been a strain in the media that is trying frantically to downplay the findings at the press conference. Their most frequent accusation is that the police did not ‘present anything new’ or ‘they did not consult sports officials and these sporting authorities are furious’.
So here is a quick outline of the true situation and the underlying factors at play:
Is this a new story?
Damn straight it is. Do not listen to the nonsense being peddled out in the media that ‘this is an old story’.
That line is a classic news-burying job.
This is because it ignores the fundamental question: ‘Is the story true?’
That question is more than answered – we know is that there have been confirmed and widespread fixing of matches in the following countries:
Turkey, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Montenegro. Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Finland, South Korea, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Guatemala and Canada.
Those twenty countries I have just pulled off the top of my head. There are many other cases in other countries.
This is not rumour. We are not speaking about winks from players from Dynamo Zagreb against Olympique de Lyon.
Note that we are speaking about convictions in a judicial court where a judge has banged a gavel and said, ‘This game was fixed.’
Two, there was new material at the Europol press conference. One of the investigators said that they had evidence that up to 150 international matches had been fixed in two years in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He stated that these were national teams playing against each other.
This is a huge story.
There are not that many international matches on that level (national teams). 150 games is a significant proportion of the total matches played over two years. Essentially, that means more than one international match a week is being fixed.
This is a serious governance issue on the part of the organizers FIFA of these types of games. The question that few journalists are asking is given this news – what specific measures has FIFA undertaken to stop these kind of games being fixed? And I do not mean holding another international conference on match-fixing.
Three, for the first time an official body – Europol – has stood up and said this activity is connected to a group coming out of Singapore.
Look, I know that people who read my book and this blog, that is an old story. But over the years there have been few officials who have had the guts to say it loudly and clearly in public.
Why is there a media spin that this is an old story?
There are two camps in the anti-match-fixing industry. One camp centred on FIFA and Interpol are happy to say a lot, but do nothing. They will make motherhood statements about how bad fixing is, but will not take any concrete action.
As you know, I exposed that Interpol is unwilling to put pressure on the Singaporean government to fulfil an international arrest warrant served by Interpol against a Singaporean accused of match-fixing by European police.
The spin comes mostly, although not exclusively, from their chums in the media trying to downplay the activities of the other camp.
This second camp in the fight against match-fixing are the police investigators who have actually done excellent work against the fixers. They have made arrests. They have got convictions. They are on their way to actually taking concrete steps against the people who are corrupting the sport.
Sadly, they have not been aided by many sports officials.
More to come, stay tuned.
Tags: europol, fifa, match fixing, singapore
[...] match-fixing author Declan Hill stressed the newness of some of VETO’s revelations. (Link to the blog here). That blog claimed an investigator said up to 150 international matches had been fixed in the last [...]
Dear Mr. Hill,
In Turkey (from the top of your list), infamous match-fixing case started officially/went public on 3 July 2011. Despite many strong evidences, Turkish Football Federation declined to take any necessary steps with the argument that all those alleged crimes were not reflected on the pitch??? Anyone who might want to know the details on this case, can have a look at the link below:
http://www.Stopmatchfixing.com
In the mean time, legal process on the same case is still not over. However, (from the same page above): ”… An Istanbul court suspended the five-year sentences of 19 officials on November 15th 2012, including Fenerbahçe board members Şekip Mosturoğlu and İlhan Ekşioğlu, for their involvement in the Turkish football match-fixing case. According to the ruling, the decision will not be appealed…” According to Turkish laws, those verdicts can be suspended under certain conditions. It does not mean that court found those officials not guilty. Court found them guilty. Period.
Now, my questions are:
1. What does UEFA and FIFA think about the match-fixing case in Turkey?
2. They always used to say “UEFA has zero tolerance on three things: 1. Match-fixing 2. Racism 3. Any threat to autonomy of its member federations.” Can they still claim that today?
3. Since July 3rd, 2011, we, Turkish soccer fans who want honest, clean game on the pitch and behind the closed doors, have been waiting for a solid step/decision on this case by UEFA and/or by FIFA. They say UEFA Disciplinary Committee is still investigating the case. What are they investigating exactly so that they still could not reach a decision so far ( 1year 5 months 4 days and, still, counting)? What is your real intention UEFA?
I forgot to mention one detail in my previous reply:
Turkish Football Federation did not take any solid steps regarding the match-fixing allegations for certain teams with the argument which I mentioned before. What I forgot was strangely, or ironically, all those games, which the allegations were targeted, ended with the favorable scores for the alleged match-fixers (FYI, Fenerbahce won 16 of 17 games in the second half of that season).
First, I am really sorry to harass your blog and article with Turkey case and I promise this is my last reply about it. I hope you would understand:
From the web page mentioned in my first reply above:
“…“…At this stage (Turkish Football Federation) Discipline Committee was ordered to find a solution to save Fenerbahçe FC from relegation by prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. So, they did as they were told and came up with a disgraceful idea ”Match fixing activities were not reflected in to the pitch”, meaning: Fenerbahçe FC vice presidents and board members agreed with players from other teams to lose against them, the games ended as they requested and all players involved in match fixing were sentenced to imprisonment by court for this offence, but the Discipline Committee managed to find no connection whatsoever between these agreements and the match results.
The biggest scandal is yet to come and no later than this very scandal decision, the Discipline Committee announced their verdict and barred two vice presidents and board members of Fenerbahçe FC and players from football due to ATTEMPT TO FIX MATCHES!!!…”
Let me try to clarify Discipline Committee’s logic behind the verdict about two vice presidents and board members of Fenerbahce: According to the verdict, those people mentioned above attempted to fix matches. No matter how hard they tried, their efforts(!) were not reflected on the pitch. However, all those games ended with favorable scores for the very same people. I could have understood this logic if it had been about only one game but it (same people, same attempts) happened for several games (same favorable scores) in a very short span of time. What kind of people do that? They attempted to fix the matches against all the risks and consequences. Each time they tried, they saw that they were unsuccessful on those attempts (as Discip. Commit. put it), but still those games ended in their favor. Very same thing did not happen once, twice, thrice but more. However, very same people could not keep themselves from committing the same crime? Did/do they simply have some thrill issues? If it’s so, why nobody in the same club stopped them???