Following a lengthy investigation into what officials have described as the biggest football match-fixing scandal to have hit Europe. The sentences handed out in Bochum, Germany are only the tip of the iceberg, as it’s estimated that there are another 300 or so suspects being investigated.
All three defendants were presented with sentences of between three and four years. They pleaded guilty to betting on soccer matches they knew had been fixed, and to bribing players involved in certain games. Two of the three men were bookmakers while the third man, known as ‘Tuna A’, was identified as a gambler. Both of the bookmakers had developed relationships with football players over a period of time. These relationships were clearly “manipulative”, as pointed out by Judge Carsten Schwadrat. The men were charged with fixing at least eighteen soccer matches, up to as high as level as Europa League standard.
The three men had apparently been involved in the sordid world of fixing outcomes of football matches for several years. Sentences will also shortly be handed out to another seven defendants, including Ante Sapina, the mastermind behind a German match-fixing ring who was sentenced to three years imprisonment in 2005. Sapina only served one third of that sentence and told the court that after his release he wagered sums of money on games that had been manipulated, shortly after the 2006 World Cup.
Plying a trade as a football tipster is difficult enough without competing against the filthy obstacle that is match-fixing. The fact that the punishment being meted out is as severe as three or fours years imprisonment will surely thwart future offenders and eliminate this blight from the beautiful game. In the meantime perhaps I (with tongue firmly placed in cheek) can deny responsibility for any incorrect soccer tips I’ve provided in the past year, and claim that these blemishes on my record as a tipster have been the result of a vile European match-fixing ring.
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