Interpol cracks down on football betting

Another crackdown on Asian football betting syndicates which are said to be “controlling” European major league results is on the cards. With the coming Euro 2008 competition to be held this summer, Interpol is seeking the cooperation of police forces from several Asian countries to carry out raids. Interpol secretary-general Ronald Noble said in Singapore yesterday that Interpol was planning to launch a second operation to curb illegal football gambling in Asia following last year’s success which netted US$680,000 (RM2.24mil) of suspected criminal proceeds. He was quoted by AFP as saying that more countries would be involved in the second operation against football gambling, which was one of the most rampant organised crimes in the region. The first operation, codenamed ”Soga”, was launched last October and involved 266 raids in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam and resulted in more than 430 individuals arrested and 272 underground gambling dens shut down. Speaking at the Global Conference on Asian Organised Crime hosted by the Singapore police force, Noble said the gambling dens that were closed handled an estimated US$680mil in illegal bets worldwide.As an indication of how widespread football gambling is, European football’s governing body UEFA had asked European police to investigate the results of at least 26 matches last year which were suspected to have been manipulated by Asian betting syndicates. Noble said that while the amount of money involved in match-fixing was unknown, UEFA claimed that an overseas syndicate made US$5mil (RM16.5mil) on one championship match alone last July. Malaysian police and the Malaysia Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) are working together to identify syndicates using the Internet to accept football bets. Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan said a task force has been set up and CID officers were currently monitoring suspected illegal bookmaking syndicates involved in accepting football bets via the Internet. “Syndicates here operate using servers from other countries and that is why it is difficult for us to trace and nab the main culprits. “That is why we have now asked our Asean counterparts as well as other police forces in the Asian region to provide us with information on syndicates linked with our country,” he told The Star. Musa said police here would exchange information with their counterparts worldwide. About 200 participants from various law enforcement agencies of 32 countries, including Malaysia, attended the two-day conference.