The European Football Association (UEFA) and the European Union’s law enforcement agency Europol announced on Tuesday that they had joined forces in the battle against corruption and match-fixing in the sport.
Participants at a combined conference in The Hague on Tuesday reviewed plans to defend the integrity of soccer, which included officials from law enforcement, judicial agencies, and national soccer associations from 49 different countries.
According to Burkhard Muehl, the director of the European Financial and Economic Crime Centre (EFECC), “organized crime immediately realized that numerous football teams had experienced financial losses as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak,” he stated.
Players, coaches, referees, and even club officials are more exposed to the manipulations of match-fixers when there is less money available to them, according to the report.
The COVID-19 epidemic, according to research conducted by UEFA earlier this year, cost European teams a total of seven billion euros ($7.91 billion) throughout two seasons, mostly owing to empty stadiums and a decline in transfer money.
To defend our beloved sport from this disease, European football, and the law enforcement sector must work together in joint operations, develop shared initiatives, and exchange information in the field of match-fixing, according to Vincent Ven, UEFA’s Head of Anti-Match-Fixing.
In collaboration with law enforcement agencies around the European Union, experts at Europol’s European Financial and Economic Criminal Centre investigate suspicious matches and suspects to discover organized crime organizations responsible for these multi-million-euro frauds against the sport.
Education, intelligence, investigation, and collaboration are the main focuses of UEFA’s team of anti-match-fixing professionals, who collaborate with its network of 55 Integrity Officers as well as important stakeholders and partners to avoid any concerns linked to match-fixing and betting anomalies.
Published By – Supreeti Ghosh
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