Europol Investigating 680 Football Matches In Match-Fixing Probe

A Europol investigation into football match-fixing has uncovered 680 suspicious matches around the world.

Europol, order the European Union’s law enforcement agency, today announced their belief that a crime syndicate based in Singapore was behind the operation. 380 of the matches under investigation took place in Europe and the remaining 300 took place outside the continent.

425 match officials, club officials, players and criminals from at least 15 countries are suspected to be involved in fixing the European games, which date back to 2008. No suspects have been named to avoid disrupting on-going investigations, although 50 arrests have already been made to date.

Europol have been investigating for 18 months and say that amongst the suspicious games are World Cup and European Championship qualifiers and two UEFA Champions League games.

Criminals are alleged to have bet over $21.5 million and made almost $11 million in profit. Bribes of $2.7 million are said to have been paid to those involved in the match-fixing, with the largest amount paid to an individual believed to be $190,000. The amounts were recovered from searching through 13,000 emails, paper trails, phone and computer records.

Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, said: “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. We have uncovered an extensive criminal network.”

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