Europe MPs bemoan ‘pandemic’ of fixed football matchesLeBron James (l.) will gemeinsam mit David Beckham in Miami ein MLS-Team etablieren
European lawmakers said Wednesday that the fight against corruption in football was a “failure” and called for stronger punishment for cheats as the number of fixed matches soar.
Belgian Socialist Marc Tarabella told the European Parliament during a debate that the EU’s law enforcement agency Europol had detected 680 suspicious matches between 2008 and 2011.
“Since the beginning of 2013, 200 new suspicious cases have been identified. The numbers are soaring,” he said.
“It is easier to corrupt badly payed players, but the past has shown that the big leagues are not excluded.”
Francesco Bavanca, a representative of Federbet, which represent the interests of operators in the gaming sector, said the sports world was facing “an emergency. It is a pandemic.”
He said his organisation had identified 51 fixed football matches, two basketball matches, three tennis matches and one volleyball game in the five past months.
“These figures are constantly rising,” he said.
Bavanca said he was convinced that in certain championships “like Cyprus, Malta or Uzbekistan for example, most matches are fixed.”
The matches under the spotlight are notably those from the preliminary rounds of the Champions League and Europa League between little known teams, often from Baltic nations or Eastern Europe.
“The fight against corruption in football is currently a failure,” said Italian Christian Democrat Salvatore Iacolino, who invited several magistrates to submit recommendations to better fight the scourge in Europe.
“Sentences are too light. These crimes are too often considered as minor. Investigators don’t have the same resources as they do for crimes which are considered to be more serious,” said Italian prosecutor Roberto Di Martino.
Tarabella and Iacolino called for EU member states to implement heavier sentences for match cheats to dissuade the fixing of games. They also called for professional players to be banned from betting.
The lawmakers also deplored the inertia of the European Football Union (UEFA), “who remains at the stage of declarations of intent.”