They team up with European gangs to bribe players or match officials to swing results in Europe and then make huge profits on Asian betting markets. Europol estimates the rackets rake in more than £100million a year. Crooks use online gambling accounts and social media to place bets and often focus on lower division games where there is less scrutiny. Research suggests 65 percent of the worldwide betting market is in Asia.
The mafia-like organised crime gangs (OCGs) are also involved in drug trafficking, property crime, extortion and illegal tobacco production.
Europol said: “Some Eurasian OCGs have increased their involvement in sports corruption. Russian-speaking OCGs have taken over control of certain football clubs for money laundering and match-fixing purposes.
“Match-fixing, fuelled by illegal betting, is perceived as a high-profit and relatively low-risk crime.
“OCGs and mafia-type organisations operating on a global level have shown a continued and increased interest in ‘investing’ in this lucrative business over the past years and it is anticipated this trend will not change in the near future.”
But Europol’s report warned that probes into match-fixing often focused on corrupt players or those bribing them – rather than the criminals higher up the chain.
And investigations take so long bosses “have enough time to leave the country and to move their interests in other jurisdictions”.
They return and continue trying to fix matches in that same country. Europol – an EU agency based in The Hague, Holland – added: “The involvement of these criminal groups in sports corruption is increasing in the EU member states.
“The global annual criminal proceeds from betting-related match-fixing are estimated at €120million.
“Online betting is increasingly used by organised crime to manipulate sports competitions and criminals usually target lower-level competitions across different sports, with football and tennis the most targeted.”
