Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

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Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport THE BOCHUM TRIAL (ONGOING) The unknown scandal in European football The second part of the Bochum Trial ended on 19 May 2011 with the sentencing to a number of years in prison of the five defendents, members of a Balkan criminal organisation: Dragan Mihelic, Deniz Celik, Marijo Cvrtak, Ante Sapina and Ivan Pavic. An earlier trial in April 2011 had already ended in the sentencing of four other criminals from the same network: Nurretin Gunay, Tuna Akbulut, Stefan Relic and Kristian Sprecakovic. The trial, which is still ongoing, is currently the largest instance of corruption in the history of European sport. It is the outcome of a vast inquiry which began - by accident - at the end of 2008. At the time, the police were investigating a prostitution and narcotics ring run by a transnational criminal organisation based in Bochum (Germany). But the investigators discovered that the criminals were also running a vast network instigating corruption in sport and rigging bets to launder the fruits of their activities. On 19 November 2009, after a year of telephone tapping, 50 people were arrested and charged with corrupting over 320 football matches in 10 European countries. International and European Cup games were included in the investigation. The corruption was organised methodically by people who identified which matches were to be fixed, others advanced the money needed to arrange such match-fixing, corruptors who contacted the sports people involved (directly or through intermediaries), and people who placed the bets and recovered the winnings etc. Major Mafia moneymen were also accused of financing criminal betting syndicates from Asia. The most vulnerable footballers were targeted for corruption (relatively old players, players at the end of their contract, those with debts etc.). The modus operandi changed continually across the 320 rigged matches. Sometimes the referee was bought, sometimes one or more specific players, sometimes an entire team was corrupted, even both teams! A Belgian club was also purchased directly by one of the members of the gang, which enabled him to place accomplices in the team and fix matches with ease. Friendly games were also organised by the corruptors purely with a view to enabling betting on these events. The criminals established a system of stars that enabled them to classify matches whose manipulation was definite (five stars for matches where both teams had been bought) down to less certain matches (one star for a single player bought out of the 22). The sums to be placed on betting sites were determined according to this classification. In the space of just over one year, a total of 12 million was injected to corrupt players, referees, trainers and federation officials. Tens of millions of euro were bet, including 32.4 million by a single 12
Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport gambler registered with the Asian operator Samvo (licensed in the United Kingdom). In total, it is estimated that this gang profited to the tune of 7.5 million 7 . It should be noted that the Croatian Ante Sapina, the mastermind of this network, had already been accused in a previous affair (the Hoyzer affair), which tainted German football in 2005. At the time, Ante Sapina and his two brothers, Milan and Philip, had been accused of corrupting two German referees, Dominik Marks and Robert Hoyzer. In total, the latter received 70,000 from Ante Sapina who walked away with a profit of about 2 million from 23 German Second and Third Division matches, one Cup match and a Turkish Championship match between April and December 2004 8 . Ante Sapina was sentenced to almost three years in prison but only remained behind bars for a few months. In the Bochum affair, Ante Sapina said he placed bets of about 1 million per month on 30 matches, and sought to corrupt on average one match per week. He also revealed that he used the former Osnabruck player Thomas Cichon to make contact with the players he corrupted. Sapina admitted having corrupted some referees in 2009. This was the case with Novo Panic, who refereed the Liechtenstein-Finland match, and Olek Orekhov, who refereed a match between FC Basel and CSKA Sofia. The first of these referees was struck off for life by UEFA in February 2010, and the second received the same penalty from the Court of Arbitration for Sport on 18 January 2011. Sapina s revelations also tarnished UEFA because he was discovered to have an inside influence on that organisation. His accomplice, Jozef Marko, served on the Referee Selection Panel and was thus able to nominate certain unscrupulous referees for matches in which Sapina had an interest. Following this affair, Marko was suspended by UEFA. The Bochum trial, the third part of which is due to begin shortly, has passed relatively unnoticed in Europe (the French daily sports paper L‘Equipe, for example, has given the investigation almost no coverage). Geographic distribution of rigged matches revealed during the first two parts of the investigation relating to the Bochum trial 7 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/german-prosecutor-accuses-six-men-of-manipulating-betting-on-soccer- games.html 8 http://www.lalibre.be/sports/football/article/251651/la-justice-sans-pitie-pour-hoyzer.html 13
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THE CALCIOS COMMESSE SCANDAL ORGANI
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Integration of resources Sports bet
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IRIS Sports betting and corruption:
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