By Andrew Warshaw
November 28 – The endemic scourge of matchfixing, which has tarnished the reputation of leagues across the globe, has struck at the heart of English football, until now considered by many to be immune from what FIFA and crime-busters have long believed is the most serious danger to the sport.
Half a century after the last major rigging scandal in the English game, the Daily Telegraph reported that six men have been arrested by the country’s National Crime Agency as part of an investigation into an alleged betting syndicate, including at least three players and an agent.
The case does not involve any professional club in the top four leagues and, as with virtually every major match-fixing case to date, focuses on crime gangs based in south-east Asia. One internationally known fixer arrived in Britain last week and was arrested on Tuesday evening, the Telegraph reported.
According to the paper, in a series of covertly recorded conversations, he claimed lower league matches could be fixed for as little as £50,000 and correctly forecast the outcome of three games played by the same team.
A spokesman for the NCA said: “Six men have been arrested across the country as part of an NCA investigation into alleged football match fixing. The focus of the operation is a suspected international illegal betting syndicate. The NCA is working closely with the Gambling Commission and the Football Association.”
The identities of the teams involved cannot yet be disclosed but Insideworldfootball has learned they are almost certainly from the three divisions below the top four professional leagues (Premier league and Football League).
In the recorded Telegraph sting, the fixer, who is from Singapore, offered to target two matches in Britain this month and said he planned to tell players how many goals needed to be scored and the exact time frame.
He claimed that he would pay one player an extra £5,000 to take a yellow card at the beginning of the game as a signal that the result was likely to be manipulated.
The fixer claimed to be connected to Wilson Raj Perumal, football’s most notorious matchfixer responsible for a string of criminal activities across the globe and at one point jailed in Finland. “Wilson Raj Perumal … he’s the king … he’s my boss. Everybody in the world know him,” the fixer said.
The current case comes just two months after Australia’s biggest scandal of its kind involving a number of British players who used to play lower-league and non-league football in England and Scotland before moving to the other side of the world. Media reports in Australia claimed Perumal was responsible for recruiting some of the alleged culprits.
Those questioned included David Obaze, an English central defender of Nigerian origin, Nick McKoy, Reiss Noel and Joe Woolley. Midfielder Noel and goalkeeper Woolley had both played for Hornchurch – a Football Conference South club two divisions below the Football League. Last season Hornchurch, alongside Billericay Town and Chelmsford, came under suspicion when some of their matches raised concern about unusual betting patterns.
The last major betting scandal in England occurred in the mid-1960s when 10 players were found guilty and jailed for conspiring to fix matches. Among those famously sentenced were England pair Tony Kay and Peter Swan, plus David ‘Bronco’ Layne, who all played for Sheffield Wednesday.
In 1994, Liverpool’s South African-born goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar was accused of matchfixing and charged with conspiracy to corrupt. Grobbelaar pleaded not guilty, claiming he was only gathering evidence with the intent of taking it to the police and after two successive trials he and his co-defendants were cleared three years later.
Although no British betting markets are believed to have been implicated in the most recent case, the fact that match fixers were in the country will raise alarm bells throughout the domestic game.
An FA spokesman said: “The FA has been made aware of a number of arrests in relation to an NCA investigation. We have worked closely with the authorities in relation to these allegations. The FA will make no further comment at this time due to ongoing investigations.”
Football League Chief Executive Shaun Harvey said: “The threat of corruption is something that The Football League and the other football authorities treat with the utmost seriousness. The integrity of our matches and our competitions is the bedrock of the domestic game.”
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