Football: ‘Nowhere safe from fixers’

ZURICH: Fifa corruption-buster Ralf Mutschke admits that no football league in the world is safe from the grim spectre of match-fixing, a global problem made worse by the influence of organised crime.

Mutschke, a former Interpol executive and a police officer for 30 years, said the problem of corruption was global and existed at all levels of the game. “Is there a region which is more vulnerable to matches being manipulated?” asked Mutschke. “My answer is no.”

In 2012 alone, Fifa’s anti-corruption investigations involved around 20 countries. “These were in America, Africa, Europe, Asia. What this shows is that the problem is worldwide. A man convicted of rigging matches came to meet me in Zurich. He told me, straight to my face, that organised crime got involved in match-fixing because the risks were low and the profits high.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2013.