Corruption inquiry: Jack Anderson says a lot more needs to be done to police professional sport and its vast amounts of money
Earlier this year Luton manager Mike Newell and former England boss Sven-Goran Eriksson claimed that English football was riddled with corruption. As a result, the FA asked Lord Stevens, the former commissioner of the London Metropolitan police, to begin an investigation into all 362 transfers in the Premier League from January 1st, 2004 to January 31st, 2006. Lord Stevens announced the interim findings of his six-month investigation yesterday and it appears that 39 of the 362 transfers will acquire further examination.
The Stevens' inquiry comes in the wake of an undercover BBC Panorama investigation that gathered information on illicit activities in English football, most notably the payment of "bungs", which are unauthorised secret payments made by a player's agent to a manager as a financial incentive to complete a transfer deal.
Corruption has a corrosive effect on an individual sport. As professional boxing vividly demonstrates, when the public lose faith in the credibility of a sport, participation levels fall, sponsors disappear and it fades irrevocably from the communal consciousness.
The more commercialised sport becomes, the more vulnerable it is to corruption, embezzlement and fraud. This is not because pay-per-view broadcasters, online gambling services and corporate sponsors encourage such activity, it is to do simply with the vast amounts of money flowing in and around the industry.
The commercialisation of professional sport is irreversible, and nuanced levels of governmental intervention are needed to prevent it becoming a victim of its successes and excesses. Already the British Minister for Sport Richard Caborn has said that Lord Stevens' and the BBC's inquiries into illegal payments in football should reinforce efforts to bring greater regulation into football at an EU level. Recently, Caborn co-sponsored a report entitled the Independent European Review of Football which calls for innovations such as salary caps for football players, collective bargaining agreements between clubs and rules determining that players pay agents a set percentage of their income, as happens in the entertainment industry, rather than agents negotiating one-off transaction fees.
The report also noted that, in terms of financial transparency, the greatest threat to European football comes from match-fixing and betting scandals and not from the occasional bung or greedy agent. This is correct and the scale of such corruption is worrying. For example, Italy's victory in this year's Fifa World Cup was tainted by scandal which now sees Juventus playing in Serie B. The host country Germany was embarrassed when, in the run up to the tournament, a leading referee was found to be associated with a gambling syndicate.
The common thread in all of these difficulties is money wagered with online betting exchanges, where punters can not only "back" (to win) but they can also "lay" to lose. Therefore if a syndicate has inside information about the likely performance of team, which is not in the public domain - for instance that key personnel on that team are willing to throw a game for a percentage of the winnings - significant amounts of money can be made by laying that team.
In July 2006, that sort of swindle formed the basis of charges against jockey Kieren Fallon. Fallon, and a number of other jockeys, trainers and owners, await trial on accusations of conspiring to defraud customers of an online betting exchange called Betfair. The Economic Crime Division of the City of London police began the investigation after being contacted by British racing's regulatory agency, the Jockey Club, who in turn had been contacted by Betfair after concerns over the betting patterns on more than 80 races.
British horseracing (as in Ireland) has a unique and lucrative relationship with gambling. In 2005 alone, £11 billion (€16 billion) was gambled on British racing. The Jockey Club is well aware that if the public begin to question whether races are being run on their merits, then a most important source of revenue and prize funding will dissipate and a spiral of decline will begin. Unsurprisingly then, the Jockey Club is co-operating fully with the British police and has, on a related matter, suspended Fallon, one of the sport's leading personalities, from racing competitively in Britain.
Corruption in Irish sport does not seem to be a problem. The major betting exchanges liaise with Ireland's leading sports organisations to ensure that any unusual betting patterns are quickly isolated.
Finally, Graham Taylor, the former England manger, has dismissed allegation of bungs and betting scams by remarking that "football is a cash game, always has, always will be". Recent events in Ireland demonstrate that that kind of excuse is no longer valid in either the sporting or political arena.
Jack Anderson lectures in law at Queen's University, Belfast
