Uefa officials accused of helping match-fixers

New York Times
Raids Expose Soccer Fixing Across Europe

By ROB HUGHES and ERIC PFANNER
Published: November 20, 2009

BOCHUM, Germany — European law-enforcement officials said Friday that they had arrested the leaders of a far-reaching gambling cartel that is thought to have conspired to influence the outcome of 200 soccer games in nine countries across the continent.

Announcing that 17 people had been arrested — 15 in Germany and 2 in Switzerland — prosecutors said they might have uncovered only the tip of a scandal in which gamblers are accused of bribing players, officials and trainers. The police said they seized more than a million euros (about $1.48 million) in cash and other assets after more than 50 raids Thursday in Germany, Britain, Switzerland and Austria.

Among the games under suspicion are three in the Champions League, the prestigious tournament for Europe’s best teams.

“Without question, this is the biggest betting scandal in the history of European soccer,” said Peter Limacher, the head of discipline for European soccer’s governing body.

Such a characterization was acutely grave, given that match-fixing scandals are not new to European soccer. The top leagues in Italy and Germany — which include some of the world’s elite teams — have had their own, less sprawling crises in recent years.

The latest investigation, which was led by the German police, suggests that the sport is riddled with even more corruption at nearly all levels than fans or officials may have suspected.

The police said the number of arrests could grow, though they thought the principals of the ring were in custody.

The German organized crime unit, based here in the Ruhr region near Düsseldorf, and the governing body for European soccer, known by its acronym, UEFA, refused to identify the suspects or to specify the games in question, saying that would jeopardize the case. A German soccer club, F. C. Würzburg Kickers, said one of its players had been arrested in the sweep. It said the player had been involved in a previous betting scandal.

Some of the evidence was uncovered through phone taps. Germany had set a precedent for this in 2005 when a referee, Robert Hoyzer, was caught fixing matches on behalf of a Croatian cartel. Months later, corruption in Italy’s top league was exposed: the chief executive and the general manager of Juventus, one of the world’s best teams, were accused of creating a network of officials, owners, referees and journalists to influence refereeing assignments and thus the outcome of league games.

In addition to the three Champions League matches under suspicion, the investigators said Friday that they had evidence involving 12 matches in the Europa League, another inter-European competition.

However, the investigation has not uncovered evidence of match fixing in any of the top-flight leagues in England, Spain, Italy or France. The stars of the sport, paid salaries upward of $5 million, are not likely to be susceptible to bribes, officials said. They emphasized that the marquee clubs like Barcelona, Manchester United, Bayern Munich and A.C. Milan so far were not suspected of fixing games.

In Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, second-tier professional leagues are involved, the police said. In Austria, Bosnia, Hungary, Turkey, Slovenia and Croatia, games in the top leagues as well as secondary leagues are included.

Germany and Turkey are the two countries with the most games in question, with 32 and 29 involved. Officials said it appeared that only soccer matches, and not other sporting events, were involved.

Mr. Limacher said that there was no evidence that the ring had fixed matches before this year and that he did not want to speculate about the possibility. About a year ago, the governing body disclosed that it had found evidence of suspicious betting on 26 soccer games. At the time, it said that the games were in Eastern Europe and involved only obscure teams playing at relatively low levels.

The scale of the corruption outlined Friday appeared to come as a surprise to UEFA. As late as Monday, William Gaillard, an adviser to the organization’s president, Michel Platini, insisted in an interview that he knew of no cases beyond those that had been reported to the European police last season. And he said he thought it unlikely that any would surface beyond lower-level matches, predominantly in Eastern Europe.

On Friday, law enforcement officials described evidence of at least 10 million euros, or about $14.8 million, in illegal gains by the gambling cartels.

“But that is surely just the tip of the iceberg,” said Friedhelm Althans, the Bochum police chief. He said that in some cases, the games did not end as the plotters had hoped — or they might have pocketed even more.

To influence players, coaches or referees to fix a game, officials said, money may not always be the most important factor. It is possible that some of the gamblers were able to catch a player in a compromising situation, they said, and bribe him to pay for silence by throwing a game.

Apart from the current investigation, there is evidence that betting cartels based in Asia have been involved in fixing matches at a much lower level than the top professional soccer leagues. Some obscure games have attracted millions of dollars in betting, officials said, suggesting that the groups have been seeking to fly under the radar by focusing on games involving only part-time professional players.


www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/sports/soccer/21fix.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=gambling&st=cse