By Andrew Warshaw
16 May- The most comprehensive survey ever conducted into the extent of Asian-dominated betting fraud has revealed that criminal gangs are laundering a staggering $140 billion, mainly on football.
In a detailed 130-page report that has taken two years to compile, researchers from the Qatar-based International Centre for Sport Security and Sorbonne University in Paris, said 80 percent of sports gambling is now illegally transacted, threatening “all countries and regions, with football and cricket the sports most under siege.”
Producing startling figures on the scale and scope of the problem, the survey estimates that wagers worth between $275 billion and $685 billion are made each year, with Asia accounting for the majority of the illegal market.
“The rapid evolution of the global sports betting market has seen an increased risk of infiltration by organised crime and money laundering,” said Chris Eaton, ICSS director of sport integrity.
“Alongside this, the transformation of the nature of betting, with more complex types of betting, such as live-betting, which according to this study is the most vulnerable, has made suspect activity even harder to detect.”
With cases of match-fixing spreading across the globe, the report called for an international convention to stop the manipulation of sporting events. “It is clear that current international instruments are insufficient and there is a desperate need for well-designed criminal laws specific to the manipulation of sport,” said Laurent Vidal, Chair of the Sorbonne-ICSS Research Programme.
“An international agreement on the manipulation of sport competition, co-ordinated by an overarching global platform, is now an urgent necessity.”
Vidal claimed that numerous Asian championships were now “fixed”.
“The Chinese are not interested in local sport any more, that is why they bet on European sport,” he was reported as saying at a forum in Paris to unveil the findings which called for greater cooperation between public authorities and betting operators and recommends a sports betting tax to finance investigations into matchfixing.
The detailed survey “represents a historic moment, not only for the ICSS, but in the fight to protect and preserve the integrity of sport,” said ICSS president Mohammed Hanzab.
“The problem is getting worse. If we do nothing sport will become to be seen as an area of corruption. With reports of match-fixing and corruption now plaguing sport on a daily basis, it is time for key organisations in sport, betting and government to step forward and work together to eradicate these problems once at for all.”
“I hope that this extensive and comprehensive two-year project ….will provide a clear call to action and move forward plans for the creation of a coordinated international integrity platform. This is crucial, not only to safeguard the credibility and integrity of sport, but to ensure we protect the very morals and ethics that sport was founded upon.”
