Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

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Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport relationship begins to take root. If the sportsperson refuses to rig a game, the corruptor reminds them of the initial presents they accepted, which helped to strengthen the relationship. If the player proves to be overly reluctant, threats may be made, given that now the criminal knows the player and their possible weaknesses (family for example). The establishment of this type of relationship of trust is known as grooming . It involves gradually winning a sportsperson s trust, preparing the field, and opening up the doorway to crime to make the (first) match-rigging proposal. This technique can be particularly effective in an individual sport such as tennis, where young players often find themselves alone on the circuit and are therefore more inclined to let themselves be approached by people they do not know. With a little talent, some corruptors even manage to become agents for the targeted athletes, in other words they manage their schedule, take care of their travel arrangements, select their doctors and/or physiotherapists, etc. Obviously sportspeople are not the only targets. Referees can also prove to be interesting prey, as demonstrated by the Hoyzer affair in Germany. This football referee - Robert Hoyzer - was banned for life in 2005 by the German Federation from any activity connected with football for having rigged several games at which he was officiating. One of these games was a German Cup match on 21 August 2004, between amateur team Paderborn and Hamburg, one of Germany s top teams. Hamburg lost 4-2 after two highly controversial penalties were awarded and one of its players was sent off 65 . Robert Hoyzer had established a long-term relationship with a Croatian criminal organisation, some of whose members frequented the King Cafe, a bar and betting shop in Berlin. Robert Hoyzer visited the cafe often and gradually built up friendships, particularly with Ante Sapina, manager of the Berlin cafe, and his two brothers Milan and Philip Sapina. It was then that these three brothers suggested he fix a few matches and bet on them at their Berlin branch 66 (cf. insert on Bochum trial, p.3). For the most powerful criminal organisations, the easiest way is to organise matches themselves! The range of corruption techniques available to criminals is almost limitless because it has recently come to light that bogus friendly matches have been organised by fraudulent organisations with the sole purpose of deceiving the betting market. For example, in February 2011 two unlikely friendly matches took place in Antalya in Turkey: Latvia- Bolivia and Estonia-Bulgaria, two matches refereed by Hungarian and Bosnian trios respectively. In the first match, Latvia beat Bolivia 2-1, while Estonia and Bulgaria walked out with a 2-2 draw, all seven goals being scored from penalties. During this time, several million euro were placed on the Asian markets, betting that three or more goals would be scored in each match. The two matches had been organised by “Footy Sport International”, a sports agency based in Thailand that was responsible for recruiting (and corrupting) the referees for these two matches. The man at the head of this organisation was a Singaporean named Anthony Santia Raj. He introduced himself as Tony to the four national federations whom he emailed in November 2010 inviting their teams to play in Turkey three months later. Footy Sport International proved to be bogus. The six referees have since 65 Pictures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp5R1wcxTuw 66 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2356513/Special-Report-Hoyzers-whistle-blowing-echoes-across-Europe.html 34
Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport received lifetime bans from FIFA, and Anthony Santia Raj, the man who organised the international matches to enrich himself on the sports betting market, is now being sought by the police 67 . A second unbelievable - but genuine - example is that of the Bahrain-Togo match held in Bahrain on 7 September 2010. The team wearing the Togo shirts were not the country s national team, but merely a group of amateur players who lost 3-0 against the genuine Bahrain team. The Togolese Federation was surprised to learn of the defeat of its national team, because at the precise time the so-called match was being played, Togo s real national team was returning by coach from an official match against Botswana 68 . The man who organised this bogus match was named Wilson Perumal Raj. He is known internationally for having been involved in many affairs of corruption in sport since the 1980s. He was imprisoned initially in 1995 for having corrupted a player in the Singapore Championship, then a second time in 2000 for having physically attacked another player with the aim of preventing him from playing in a match. In 2009, he succeeded in corrupting the national team of Zimbabwe which was playing in an Asian tournament, before organising the bogus meeting between Bahrain and Togo. He was arrested on 25 February 2011 in Finland, where he received a two-year prison sentence for having rigged Finnish Championship matches with nine players (including seven Zambians) to whom he had paid between $20,000 and $50,000 for every match fixed 69 . The seizure of Wilson Perumal Raj s mobile phone revealed the existence of an international corruption network, with contacts who were members of national federations, employees of betting operators, financial criminals, professional players and referees. As these examples of bogus matches demonstrate, the world of sport is not immune to exceedingly ingenious transnational criminal activities, some of them even verging on unbelievable in the light of what they dare to do. B. The specific role of sports betting in corruption Our analysis of cases of corruption in sport has already revealed that many matches are rigged with the aim of enrichment on the sports betting market. In fact, corruption has always been intimately linked with gambling. The laws of cricket and golf were codified in England in the 18 th Century in order to resolve betting-related disputes. Cricket has a particularly rich history when it comes to cheating and fraudulent bets. David Forrest (2008) quotes a press article dating from 1774 criticising changes in cricket, which was being perverted - according to the author - by excessive gaming 70 . Since then, the vast majority of corruption scandals have continued to be connected with betting activity, as has been seen in the cases of the Black Sox scandal in baseball in 1919, the Hansie Cronje affair in cricket in 2000, the Davydenko affair in tennis in 2007 and the Bochum trial in 2010. 67 http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Sports/Story/A1Story20110311-267582/2.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/14481355.stm 68 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703384204575509830139498188.html 69 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/8648454/Global-match-fixing-investigation-claims-major-scalp-as-Wilson-Raj- Perumal-is-jailed-for-two-years.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/8496787/Wilson-Raj-Perumal-theconvicted-match-fixer-who-ran-international-empire-yards-from-Wembley.html 70 Forrest, McHale and McAuley, Risks to the Integrity of Sports from Betting Corruption, 2008 35
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Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

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