SportAccord has produced a video on integrity in sports gambling
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – SportAccord, an umbrella organization for 105 Olympic and non-Olympic sports federations, Wednesday 11 January kicked off its new programme to fight match fixing worldwide.
The programme offers a set of generic tools, free of charge to international sports federations, their athletes and officials, to raise awareness about responsible sports betting behaviour.
The special unit dedicated to sports integrity was set up in 2010. It announced today that “the international sports movement has recognized that the fight against the manipulation of results is an absolute priority and therefore, with the support and expertise of the WLA (World Lottery Association) and the EL (The European Lotteries), the Global Programme has been developed.”
Other SportAccord activities include an online video portal, The Sports Hub, organizing multi-sports games, and special activities centred around doping-free sport, as well as sports’ social responsibility and sports’ integrity.
Chateau de Bethusy, Lausanne, home of the international sports arbitration court
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Oleh Oriekhov, the Ukrainian football referee accused of game fixing, has lost his appeal. He was handed a life ban “on exercising any football-related activity” by Uefa, the European football federation based in Nyon, in July 2010. Oriekhov took his case to Cas (international sports arbitration court) in Lausanne, which announced Tuesday 18 January that it has upheld the ban, citing repeated contacts between Oriekhov and “and the members of a criminal group involved in match-fixing and betting fraud”.
The referee, under Uefa regulations, should have immediately alerted the football federation when he was first contacted, and it was his failure to do so that is behind the court’s decision.
A 15 December Cas hearing showed that “it has been convincingly established” that Oriekhov had contacts before and after the specific match in question between FC Basel and CSKA Sofia, Cas notes in a statement. “The existence or not of an effective manipulation concerning the Europa League match between FC Basel and CSKA Sofia could not be established during the Cas procedure.”
“On 5 November 2009, the referee Oleg Oriekhov officiated a match between FC Basel and CSKA Sofia in group E of the 2009-2010 UEFA Europa League.
The Crucible, Sheffield, England (GenevaLunch) - The finals of the snooker World Championships in Sheffield feature Scotsman Grame Dott against Australian Neil Robertson, who is the first finalist from outside of the British and Irish islands since 1980.
Their match has been pushed into the background by a match-fixing scandal involving current champion John Higgins being set up by the News of the World, a popular British Sunday paper, 2 May. Their journalists posed as Ukrainean businessmen in Kiev to persuade Higgins to deliberately lose some frames in future matches.
Nyon, home to European football's Uefa
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Uefa, the European football governing body, is extending its investigation into match-fixing to seven additional matches played in July 2009 involving five football clubs in Albania, Hungary, Latvia and Slovenia. The announcement came at the close of a three-hour meeting in Nyon 25 November that Uefa had called with nine national football associations.
(parody video) Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Uefa confirmed in a press conference that there have been a number of arrests by German police in an investigation into a massive match fixing scandal involving about 200 matches. Media reports say there have also been two arrests in Switzerland, unconfirmed by Uefa. There have been more than 50 police raids in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Britain. The investigations were triggered by suspicions of rigged betting, especially in the German, Turkish, Belgian, Croatian, Austrian, Slovenian, Hungarian and Bosnian leagues, in the qualifying rounds of the Champions League and Europa League.
