FIFPro news
‘Influence of underworld on clubs is underestimated’
Tuesday 26 February
Europol recently presented the results of a lengthy investigation into match-fixing in pro football. FIFPro secretary general Theo van Seggelen responds to the investigation in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw.
At the start of this month Europol presented the results of a lengthy investigation into match-fixing in the football sector. For FIFPro, the world trade union of footballers, the figures were not news. ‘We had advanced knowledge,’ says Theo van Seggelen, secretary general of FIFPro. It may not have been a surprise, but that does not mean that the organisation is not concerned about the grip the criminals are gaining on the sport.
There has been very close contact for a long time between the European investigation department, which concentrates on combating criminal organisations, particularly in the drug world, and FIFPro. ‘That contact arose because Europol has a completely different idea about how to address the problem than the football world. The sport administrators want zero tolerance: players must be dealt with as quickly and as severely as possible. Europol has a different approach and that appeals more to us. You mustn’t tackle the footballers but the people who organise things. Europol sees the approach to match-fixing as an act in the fight against organised crime because it also involves laundering criminal money. They are not interested in football but in organised crime.’
According to Van Seggelen, Europol wants to come into contact with players who are already involved in manipulating matches. ‘They want to infiltrate and then you have to make use of the knowledge of the fixers. That is the opposite to the zero tolerance that the football world wants. The second major difference is that the football world does not realise that organised crime has already infiltrated football.’
‘The cooperation between Europol and the football is, in my view, not good. The football world underestimates what influence the underworld has on clubs or football organisations. The
president of the Serbian football association started cheering when the Europol investigation showed that no arrests had been made in his country. He thinks that proves that there is no match-fixing in Serbia. Well, we know from the players that Serbia is the country where it is most prolific.’
According to Van Seggelen, reports of the European Union show that the football sector is a good sector for laundering money and he adds his own experience in this. ‘I have been in this world for years and I regularly ask myself what football is used for. Look, the mobility of employees in the European Union is three percent. Among footballers it is thirty percent. It has been proved that mobility makes it easier to allow money to roll, around the whole world. Amounts are paid for players which make you think: that cannot only be for sport arguments. The transfer system is used to launder money.’
FIFPro’s own investigation has shown that players are intentionally paid too late so that they are weakened and forced to participate in match-fixing. ‘I heard the Cypriot minister of sport say that he knew that presidents of clubs did not pay players so that, after five months, they could say: you’ll get your money but you’ll have to fix that match. It is usual in those countries, unthinkable in the Netherlands.’
The situation is, according to the trade union man, deteriorating. The position of players in Eastern Europe was mapped in 2012. Comparable research must now also show how great the problem is in West and Central Europe. ‘That is in the interests of the players. We must offer them protection. That zero tolerance policy of the UEFA and the FIFA will lead nowhere. With that policy, players will come into a lose-lose situation. If they voluntarily report that they have taken part in match-fixing, they are then prosecuted by the public prosecutor of the FIFA. They have nowhere to go. We have to get the players to talk. Now talking means punishment and end of story, end of career. There is no possibility of telling a story with a reduced punishment in return, as the case is with doping in cycling.’
Van Seggelen is afraid that the football world is becoming a ‘shady world to which criminals are getting increasingly easier access.’ An example? ‘In Romania during discussions, I was told: I own half of Bucharest. What are you doing here? I’ve nothing to do with you. In the Ukraine, I was once thrown out of a meeting after five minutes. And the guy I had spoken to in Romania was later murdered. And I have sat with people who, not much later, were arrested. If that type of person has a leading function in football, we really do have to be worried. If I look at clubs with foreign backers, I ask myself what motive they have. The combination of facts and experiences makes me very nervous about the future of football.’
A major thorn in the eye of FIFPro is that increasingly players are becoming the property of persons, the so-called third party ownership. ‘That leans towards the criminal world. In my own circle, I have never met anyone who was owner of a player. That has become a vague circuit and in Europe it is even exploding. In this way, you increase the chances of criminals in football. Their interest really does go further than just the game.’
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