Match-fixing probe rocks European football

  • We had an issue with background services between march 10th and 15th or there about. This meant the payment services were not linking to automatic upgrades. If you paid for premium membership and are still seeing ads please let me know and the email you used against PayPal and I cam manually verify and upgrade your account.

ManlyBacker

Winging it
Now we know why there is so much diving in Europe:

Up to 200 elite European football matches, including three Champions League fixtures, are under investigation after police launched a series of raids in a mass match-fixing probe.

Police carried out 50 raids across Europe arresting 15 people in Germany and two in Switzerland.

Bochum state prosecutor Andreas Bachmann said at a news conference overnight initial estimates put the illegal gains at about 10 million euros ($14.85 million) but he added that the figure was just "the tip of the iceberg".

The German investigation is focused on a criminal syndicate suspected of having bribed players, coaches, referees and officials to fix games.

Members of the match-fixing ring, believed to have included around 200 people, then made money by betting on the results.

Officials say at least three of the games were in the Champion's league - and another 12 were in the UEFA Europa League.

"We at (European soccer's governing body) UEFA are stunned by the magnitude of this," UEFA representative Peter Limacher told reporters at a Bochum police news conference.

"This is undoubtedly the biggest match-fixing scandal that European football has ever seen. Now we must do everything to make sure those referees, players and officials are taken to justice."

Hundreds of matches

Bochum police said 200 people were suspected of involvement in attempts to rig about 200 matches in 2009, some during the current season.

No details of which teams or players and officials involved were released.

"There was a group of individuals who did or tried to influence matches with money and make illegal profit through the placing of bets," said Bachmann.

A City of London spokeswoman said in a statement: "Following a request from German law enforcement officers, City of London police assisted in the execution of a search warrant in the Greater London area on Thursday".

She added no arrests had been made and just one property was searched.

Some 32 matches in Germany's lower divisions as well as dozens of first or second division matches in Turkey, Belgium, Bosnia, Hungary, Croatia, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia were under investigation.

Twelve matches in the Europa League, the second-tier European club competition behind the elite Champions League, were also under suspicion as well as several Under 21 European Championship qualifiers.

In 2005, Germany was rocked by a betting scandal involving Bundesliga referee Robert Hoyzer, who rigged matches as part of an international illegal betting gang and was sentenced to two years and five months in prison.

"Even if the German professional football is only partly involved we will fully support the effort to expose this," German League chief Reinhard Rauball said on Friday.

"We owe it to the fans to do everything within our power to offer a clean competition."

-ABC/Reuters
 
No kidding.  I wonder if the referee who missed Thierry Henry groping the football was also on the take?
 

Members online

Latest posts

Team P W L PD Pts
3 3 0 48 6
3 2 1 45 4
3 2 1 28 4
3 2 1 22 4
3 2 1 15 4
3 2 1 14 4
2 1 1 13 4
3 2 1 10 4
2 1 1 6 4
3 2 1 -3 4
3 1 2 0 2
3 1 2 -5 2
3 1 2 -15 2
3 1 2 -22 2
3 1 2 -36 2
2 0 2 -56 2
3 0 3 -64 0
Back
Top Bottom