One of the biggest investigations ever into match fixing, 700 games. Dan Tan from the video is in the news again.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/s...-in-680-soccer-matches.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
With next summers World Cup in Brazil drawing closer, a European police intelligence agency said Monday that a 19-month investigation revealed widespread occurrences of match-fixing in recent years, with nearly 700 games globally deemed suspicious. The list of matches is staggering and encompasses about 380 games in Europe, covering World Cup and European championship qualifiers, as well as Champions League games, including one match played in England.
Officials of Europol, an agency that works with countries across the continent, offered details that strike at the sports core: nearly $11 million in profits and nearly $3 million in bribes were discovered during the investigation, which uncovered match-fixing activity on a scale we have not seen before, said Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol.
Fixers typically seek to dictate a games result by corrupting the players or the on-field officials, and officials said Monday that roughly 425 people were under suspicion because of the investigation, with 50 people having been arrested. The scope of the investigation covered games from 2008 to 2011.
An organized crime syndicate based in Asia is believed to be the driving force behind the fixing activity, which stretches across at least 15 countries, officials said. Individual bribes were, in some instances, upward of $136,000, and fixers would place bets on the tainted matches through bookmakers in Asia. Various matches in Africa, Asia and South and Central America were identified as suspicious, though the European element of the investigation is the most significant.
This is a sad day for European football, Wainwright said at a news conference in the Netherlands, adding: It is clear to us this is the biggest-ever investigation into suspected match-fixing in Europe. It has yielded major results, which we think have uncovered a big problem for the integrity of football in Europe.
