September 29 – FIFA has handed Marco Antonio Trovato Villalba, president of the Paraguayan club Olimpia, a life-time ban from the game after finding the football official guilty of match manipulation.
September 2 – The number of betting related fixed matches saw a fractional decrease in 2020, according to the third annual Suspicious Betting Trends in Global Football Report.
August 17 – Armenian football, which has been so plagued by match-fixing that it abandoned its second tier league, has announced a new sponsorship deal with online bookmaker brand VBET, owned by BetConstruct.
By Paul Nicholson
August 7 – The involvement of organised criminal gangs (OCGs) in sports, and football in particular, is increasing in Europe and the Covid crisis has accelerated that increase, according to a new report by Europol, the European Union’s agency for law enforcement cooperation.
August 3 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has issued another life time ban on a Laos national team player for match fixing.
By Paul Nicholson
July 17 – In 2018 when Insideworldfootball and Rex Sport hosted their Tackling Match-fixing conference in London a number of panellists made the point that betting related match manipulation was the playground of major organised crime gangs.
July 8 – Football authorities in Armenia have suspended their entire second tier and handed out 45 lifetime bans after one of the biggest match-fixing episodes of recent years in Europe.
May 20 – The integrity of a match reportedly played between two Brazilian clubs on March 25, and which was offered on the betting markets attracting a reported £1.4 million in wagers, is being investigated.
April 24 – In a landmark ruling, nine former executives, players, and businessmen including five former directors of Osasuna and two ex-Real Betis players have been handed prison sentences after being found guilty of being involved in match-fixing – the first time ever that sporting corruption has led to jail terms in Spain.
April 17 – Former Nigerian international Dickson Etuhu (pictured), who played for a raft English teams including Manchester City, has been banned from football in Sweden, where he last competed, for five years for attempted match-fixing.
April 6 – UEFA has issued an intelligence alert to its federations warning that match-fixers are quickly adapting to Covid-19 restrictions, despite the bulk of leagues and games across Europe having been shut down.
By Paul Nicholson
March 31 – The coronavirus lockdown has not stopped football-related betting fraud with the re-emergence last weekend of so-called ‘ghost’ games in Ukraine.
February 26 – Two Laos internationals have been handed life bans for alleged match-fixing by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
February 18 – FIFA is investigating suspected match-fixing in Myanmar’s 7-0 defeat in a World Cup qualifier last year.
February 5 – FIFA has banned four Kenyan-based players for their involvement in match-fixing in the latest case of rigging to rock African football.