By Andrew Warshaw
April 4 – Lebanese football, already reeling from an ongoing match-fixing scandal, has suffered even more embarrassment after three of its officials were suddenly pulled out of taking charge of an AFC Cup game in Singapore.
“Singapore and FAS have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to matchfixing and football corruption,” the Singapore FA said in a statement as the match was due to kick-off. “We take a serious view of allegations pertaining to matchfixing and football corruption activities and the authorities and FAS will spare no effort in minimising the possibility of such activities taking place within the local football scene.”
The FAS said it had contacted the AFC who quickly dispatched replacement officials to cover the match. Sabbagh has been an international referee since 2008, according to FIFA, and has taken charge of World Cup qualifiers in Asia, including Nepal’s 2-1 win over East Timor in June 2011 and Oman’s win over Myanmar.
The latest incident will further unsettle football’s administrators as they try to unravel the scourge of global match-fixing. In February, Europol indentified hundreds of fixed games, many of them apparently run from illegal betting bases in Singapore. The Lebanese Football Association itself has punished 24 players including lifetime bans for internationals Ramez Dayoub and Mahmoud El-Ali.
Match-fixing is now regarded almost as an epidemic, most of it emanating from Asia but hitting games across the globe. Last week, the company widely regarded as the world’s leading experts in betting fraud detection revealed to InsideWorldFootball that up to 45 countries in Europe suffer from match-fixing with as many as 300 games per season rigged.
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