INTERPOL Integrity in Sport Bi-Weekly Bulletin - 27 June 2016 - 10 July 2016

This week we give the floor to Sarah Lacarrière, Global Lottery Monitoring System Secretary General (GLMS) and Vagelis Alexandrakis, European Lotteries Sport Executive Secretary who shed light on the impact of match-fixing in the sport betting world.

For the first two weeks of July, there have been match-fixing investigations from different continents, including doping issues in Kenya as they gear up for the Olympic games.

THE FLOOR TO...

Sarah Lacarrière, Global Lottery Monitoring System (GLMS) Secretary General and Vagelis Alexandrakis, European Lotteries Sport Executive Secretary

Match-fixing is one of the greatest problems in modern sport, as evident from the media, which reports an incident almost every day. This problem directly undermines the very credibility of sports. Lotteries, as the primary partners of sport and driven by their core values, integrity, precaution, and solidarity, have been pioneers in raising awareness of the risks resulting from modern sports betting paradigm for more than a decade. They hold an important role in monitoring such threats, promoting responsible sports betting, and acting as driving forces at a national level. Additionally, they collectively support international initiatives, in particular, educational campaigns. As prevention is a core leverage, EL/WLA had jointly supported SportAccord for the creation of a Global Integrity Programme since 2011 (until 2015). It comprised of the first e-learning tool aimed at raising awareness among officials and athletes of international federations on the growing threat of match-fixing, and related sports betting risks and rules. It has been tailored for football in 2013 and is still endorsed by INTERPOL as a tool to warn players. Furthermore, throughout 2013-2014, EL was a key partner in the pan-European project, led by IRIS “What national networks in the EU against match-fixing”. In the 23 EU Member States, the Lotteries coordinated workshops to bring together all relevant stakeholders (sport, regulatory authorities, operators, law enforcement representatives) with the objective to enhance national cooperation and coordination in the field. On many occasions, these workshops led to the immediate mobilisation of national stakeholders and in some countries, facilitated the way to the creation of a national platform, as per article 13 of the EPAS Convention.

Monitoring of betting patterns is of significant importance to detect fraud and manipulations. Launched in 1999, EL was a pioneer association created as a way to share information on sports betting modern evolutions. As of 2005, this cooperation oriented specifically towards looking at integrity threats, with the formal set up of the European Lotteries Monitoring System (ELMS) in 2009 to monitor sports betting markets irregularities. Building on the years of experience and efforts deployed at the European level, the Global Lottery Monitoring System (GLMS) was created in 2015 with worldwide ambitions. The GLMS currently has 27 Members across the world. As a network with full-time dedicated operators, GLMS detects and analyses suspicious betting activities that could question the integrity of a sport competition and reports escalated cases to sports governing bodies. When it comes to betting regulation, lotteries rely on the guidance of the EL Code of Conduct on Sports Betting, which was released in 2007 and updated in 2014. The Code addresses numerous issues, such as consumer protection, protection of minors, responsible advertising, restrictions on the events and betting types to be offered, strict conflict of interest provisions for Lotteries and their employees involved in events and odds selection, obligation to report suspicious betting activities etc. These matters reflect on the many provisions of the Council of Europe Convention against the Manipulation of sport competitions, which the Lotteries fully support and see as the path forward to reinforcing national and international cooperation facilitated by the development of national platforms. We will continue to support these important steps by bringing together our associations’ members to mutualise efforts and carry the shield.

INVESTIGATIONS

Bangladesh

There is no end to the problems in Bangladesh cricket as another controversy has erupted in Bangladesh cricket and this is the big one i.e. match fixing allegations. DPL team Victoria SC has raised allegations on three international players for doubtful on-field activities during the game. The three players which are under scanner are Naid Chowdhury, Shuhrawadi Shuvo, and Dolar Mahmud. All have marked their presence in international cricket for their team in the past. The Victoria SC team has submitted a written note to the Bangladesh cricket board expressing their concerns and grievances regarding the issue. The team has requested the board to scrutinise the actions of all the three players during the tournament especially in the two of the matches they played against the Legends of Rupaganj. In the first match against Ruparaganj in the month of April, Victoria team posted a total of 314 but match ended in a tie. In the second contest, the Victoria team posted a defendable total of 258 but lost the match. Pawan Negi scored an unbeaten 124* for Rupaganj. “We have submitted an application to the board to investigate against three players of our team. We think they intentionally played badly against Legends of Rupganj in both round matches to lose the games. Against Rupganj in the first round and the Super League match, our players Nadif Chowdhury, Suhrawadi Shuvo and Dollar Mahmood dropped a number of catches in the vital moments, for which we had to lose both the games."

"From here we doubt they did these intentionally going against their own team.” said the club president Nesar Ahmed on the issue. “We show caused Nadif Chowdhury, Dollar Mahmood, Suhrawadi Shuvo and some other players. But they never replied to our concerns. So now it’s up to the board to find out why the players did these against their team,” concluded the club president. Off the three players, Suhrawadi Shuvo was hospitalised during the tournament after being hit by a bouncer. He was immediately rushed to the hospital and was kept under the observation for 24 hours. He was released from the hospital after being found stable. This is not the first controversy in DPL as the non-payment of match fees to players was also one of the issues raised during the tournament. In this edition of DPL the Indian players marked their presence and around 15-20 players participated in the league showing their talent on the field. Few of them were Manoj Tiwary, Unmukt Chand, Pawan Negi, Manvinder Bisla, Uday Kaul and few others participated in the tournament.

Source: Narang, "DPL team raises match fixing allegations against three international players", 27 June 2016, Sportz Wiki, https://sportzwiki.com/cricket/dpl-team-raises-match-fixing-allegations-three-international-players/

Tuesday, 12 July 2016