News
Europol - The involvement of organised crime groups in sports corruption
28/08/2022
1 / OCGs operate a top-down operational business model and are often polycriminal.
2 / The global annual criminal proceeds from betting-related match-fixing are estimated at €120 million.
3 / Online betting is increasingly used by OCGs for betting-related match-fixing.
4 / The use of online technologies for the purpose of sport betting linked to competition manipulation will continue to facilitate these illicit activities.
5 / In match-fixing schemes, the fixing is usually organised separately from the betting. Betting may be placed on the pre-match markets or on the (most predominant) live-betting (or in play-betting) and criminals may engage in fixing the outcome of a match or single sub-sets (spot-fixing).
6 / OCGs predominantly target sporting competitions matching the profile of lowerlevel competitions across different sports.
7 / Betting-related match-fixing can well serve as a platform to further high-scale money laundering schemes by the same OCGs involved in sports corruption for its own benefit, and/or to serve other OCGs in search of specialised ‘laundering services’.
8 / Money laundering can take place via online betting, by either exploiting regulated betting operators or taking the direct ownership of those operators (‘criminally controlled gambling operators’).
9 / OCGs misuse identities to create betting accounts and e-wallets used to bet on pre-arranged matches.
10 /OCGs maximise their illegal gains by combining the benefits coming from competition manipulation for both sport-related and betting related purposes.
11 / The actual scale of sport-related match-fixing remains an intelligence gap.
12 / Football remains the most targeted sport by international OCGs.
13 /Detection of match-fixing schemes in tennis has increased. Eurasian OCGs are highly involved in tennis match-fixing.