The European Police Office and UEFA organized their first joint international conference on Tuesday to fight together against match-fixing and corruption in sport.
The European police office and UEFA organized their first joint international conference on Tuesday to fight together against match-fixing and corruption in sport, which are more and more frequent due to the pandemic, according to Europol.
«Organized crime quickly realized that many football clubs were suffering financially due to Covid-19said Burkhard Mühl, a senior Europol official.
«With the huge profits associated with making the unpredictable predictable, we are seeing more and more cases of match fixing and suspicious results.he added as players, coaches, officials and even club officials are increasingly susceptible to corruption.
Experts from Europol’s European Financial and Economic Crime Center headed by Mr Mühl, are working with EU authorities to identify links between suspicious matches and suspects, and to uncover organized crime groups that orchestrate these multi-million euro frauds against sport.
UEFA’s anti-match-fixing expert team works on education, intelligence, investigation and cooperation with a network of specialists, with a particular focus on preventing any problems. related to match-fixing and betting irregularities.
49 countries present at this meeting
«Cooperation between law enforcement and sports organizations is essential“, according to Mr. Mühl, to detect and investigate suspicions of corruption in football, but also “to stop these fraudulent activities before they even start».
109 senior officials from law enforcement, judicial authorities and national football associations from 49 countries participated in this joint Europol-UEFA conference at Europol headquarters in the city of The Hague, Netherlands.
They discussed topics such as operational collaboration between law enforcement and football integrity officers, and early detection of suspicious betting patterns.
