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In the eighties, my hometown had a particularly good soccer team, acting as a stable second-class guard when the “grind, old foxes” for talented youngsters came along. Yes, the latter gave and took the games, as it turned out that one of the headquarters of the national toto scandal was the urban sports field. In a year, they probably preferred to take the results with them because they almost made it to the first class. This required a single point in the last game. But they were eliminated 8-1. It was an incredible disappointment for me when years later it turned out that these matches were not at all in front of me, decided on the field. And that the beloved footballers were simple scammers. Who, by the way, couldn’t play soccer.
So much so that the adult generation of the toto furs of the eighties learned so much that the professionalism of soccer brought with it the sophistication of criminal methods. Especially in the last decade, when the incidence of cases has increased dramatically, it has drawn so much attention from the EU institutions. In 2013, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on corruption in sport, calling for action in a number of areas, including the collection, sharing, analysis and dissemination of information on the matter. Another resolution, of the same year, on online gambling, drew attention to the fact that gambling fraud is easily associated with money laundering, which in turn affects the balance of the internal market. And in 2014, a Europol operational project was launched to support Member State investigations.
The generally accepted definition of this type of crime is contained in article 3 of the Council of Europe Convention of 2014 on the manipulation of sporting events. According to the Convention “Manipulation of sports competitions means an intentional organization, action or omission intended to improperly alter the outcome or course of a sports competition in order to eliminate, in whole or in part, the unpredictable nature of that sports competition in order to obtain an undue advantage. for oneself or for others. ”
According to a study by Europol, the global betting market for all sports is 1.69 trillion euros per year. Within that, soccer represents more than 60 percent of the market. Worldwide, 65 percent of gambling traffic is through Asian offices, 21 percent in Europe and the remaining 14 percent in the rest of the world. At the same time, the share of the regulated gambling market worldwide is only 25 percent, that is
three quarters of the bets are illegal.
The execution of the crime itself, from planning to implementation and legalization of illegally obtained income, requires a very high degree of organization, in addition, in an international environment, so it is not surprising that crimes related to sports corruption enter the realm of organized crime. Cross-border cooperation is key, but it is equally important that much of the fraud takes place online.
In addition to influencing sporting events, these criminals are often involved in other serious crimes. For example, in international drug trafficking, money laundering, property crimes and extortion. People from the EU and outside the EU are also involved in criminal organizations. Among the latter, a large proportion of criminal organizations can be observed in Southeast Asia. But there are also speakers of Russian, Armenian, Albanian, to name just the most typical. Interestingly, there is no rivalry between Asian and European criminal gangs. Rather, there is cooperation, with no signs of aggressive competition in this market.
You don’t have to buy a match, you have to bring a team
We would think that all that is needed to defend against a match is to bribe a player or players of the team, a coach, a referee, who will then do or not do something to get the desired result. This, of course, is still the most common solution, but several criminal groups have already cut the Gordian knot: they have bought a club. Possibly a majority or controlling stake in the club. This is used by networks in Southeast Asia, especially China, to explore associations that are struggling with more or less financial difficulties and to make their takeover offers. Not only people participate, but also companies. How widespread this is in the European Union is still very little known to intelligence, but the model exists and it works.
It is worth stopping here for a moment. The push of Chinese companies is on the agenda of the European Union. The coronavirus epidemic has intensified this process: a Chinese investor arrives for companies weakened by the crisis and makes a very attractive offer, in exchange for the EU company soon becoming a Chinese interest. Although these are private companies, but demonstrably behind them is the Chinese state and unlimited financial financing. For this reason, restrictions on this behavior are already being taken seriously in the EU, as prohibited state aid would lead to immediate EU action in a European country. In other words, from the indications, it seems that the Chinese model used in the competitive arena has also reached sports associations. Where it is no longer the Chinese state companies that win the European interest, but the Chinese criminal gangs. Respectively: who knows?
It is also an existing model in which criminals do not buy clubs or stakes, but instead outsource their self-directed foreign legions to associations. This, of course, also requires proper relationships on the part of the club’s management, but once the legionnaire becomes a team player, a match can be easily controlled. Another question is how a soccer player handles the situation, when he gets there, the team immediately starts to produce unexpectedly bad results.
Something like this also happened in Hungarian football. A foreign legion was eliminated from the first class with their team in a year, then transferred to another association that was still in NB I, but only until the end of the season. So in two years, the Legion had two teams drop out of the highest class. Sure, we are not claiming that there were furries, but international investigators are writing studies on such cases in relation to sports corruption.
9 years – 92 scams
As soon as we know more details about the police study, we file a civil investigation. Last year, Argyro Elisavet Manoli, an academic at Loughborough University, also compiled a summary of sports corruption cases between 2010 and 2018. A total of 92 cases were identified in the study, with most of the fraud occurring in fields football, representing 47 cases.
In a total of 19 different sports, investigators became aware of the fraud. Soccer was followed by athletics with five cases, followed by tennis and cycling with four cases each. But they also influenced the outcome, albeit only once, in hockey, basketball, biathlon, swimming, running and a Paralympic sport. The study also found that, although a number of measures have been taken to prevent fraud in some of the affected countries, such as France and Bulgaria, the number of reported cases has increased dramatically.
The mafia loves soccer and tennis
According to Europol, organized crime groups, mafia-type organizations, consider this kind of money to be a very good deal. The risk is low and the benefit is high, which is also the reason for the constant increase in its presence in this area in recent years and this trend is not expected to change in the near future. The entire business model is structured and the structure of the criminal group is such that, in the event of a crash, the upper upper layer remains intact. Players, coaches, referees, and possibly intermediaries in contact with them may fail, but administrators remain hidden from investigators.
The sport most affected, of course, is soccer, but there is also a growing criminal interest in tennis matches. In addition, intelligence shows that other sports have been targeted, such as basketball, handball, beach volleyball and hockey.
The money spent on football betting around the world far exceeds any other form of sports betting: according to available data, people spend 895 billion euros a year on football, while, as we wrote earlier, the total cost it is 1.69 trillion euros. It is estimated that less than 1 percent of soccer matches were cheated. Of course, lower-class parties are the main targets of criminal groups because it is easier to find and pay the right person and it has much less repercussion for a “strange” result. They also make sure that if you don’t have the aforementioned traveling legionnaires, you will find players who either have a key position within the teams or are struggling with some problem (family, alcohol, drugs) and may even be blackmailed. And the mediator is in many cases a former team player, but he is definitely a person who has local knowledge and a kind of respect and respect in the given environment.
Cheating in tennis matches has explicitly increased in recent years. Nearly 500 matches were rigged between 2014 and 2018, but according to Europol, the actual number could be much higher. It should be noted that between 2016 and 2017, the number of fraud multiplied by nine. Tennis is also attractive because it has a limited number of participants, but they are key players, so it is enough to surround a competitor or a judge. The Futures events of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and Challenger competitions of the Federation of Tennis Professionals (ATP) have been observed to be the main targets. Criminals often bet low or medium stakes on tournaments with a total prize of between $ 5,000 and $ 10,000. These matches are often not videotaped and are sufficient to achieve the desired result if a player is suddenly injured during a match. This type of fraud is almost undetectable and undetectable.
Covid effect
Of course, the pandemic also affects sports corruption. Due to the spring closures, matches were greatly delayed, only a very limited number of sporting events were organized, and by definition only a fraction of the previous one could be manipulated. However, criminals also seem to have adapted to the new situation and have targeted the youth as well as friendly parties. However, the imagination and hunger for money of scammers is limitless. In some countries, it has been observed that so-called “ghost parties” are offered for reception. That is, matches that were not held, however, the criminals created conditions as if the sporting event really existed. Bookies and punters are offered these “ghost matches” that are advertised on fake social media, blogs or websites. For the sake of perfection, cheats also include non-existent lineups, stats, and match results so that betting can be done with solid knowledge.
The article is from Eurologue and European network of data journalists as a result of cooperation between CC BY-SA 4.0 license according to.
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