Europol and UEFA hold the first international conference on match-fixing in football (Photos)

Europol confirms that a total of 109 senior officials from law enforcement, judicial authorities and national football associations from 49 countries attended the joint Europol-UEFA conference at Europol's headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands.

During the conference experts analyzed the most pressing current and future threats to protect the integrity of football and fight against organized crime groups. They discussed topics such as operational collaboration between law enforcement bodies and football integrity officers, and the early detection of suspicious betting patterns.

Prevention was another prominent topic on the agenda, with discussions focusing on the new legal frameworks recently adopted and existing tools designed to prevent match-fixing and facilitate the exchange of information.

Burkhard Mühl, director of Europol's European Economic and Financial Crime Center (EFECC), commented that where there is less money there is greater vulnerability and organized crime understood the crisis of many football clubs due to the pandemic.

“What with the huge profits associated with ‘making the unpredictable predictable’, we are seeing more and more cases of match-fixing and suspicious results. Cooperation between law enforcement and sports organizations is vital to not only detect and investigate suspected corruption in football, but also to stop such fraudulent activities before they can even begin,” he explained.

Meanwhile, UEFA's Managing Director of Integrity and Regulatory, Angelo Rigopoulos, stressed that this first joint conference meeting “is an important step forward in the fight against match-fixing and sends out a strong signal that both organizations are here to pool their forces and do their utmost to minimize this phenomenon”.

Vincent Ven, head of UEFA's Anti-Match Fixing, insists on the importance of the union between football and the police to "offer their mutual support in seeking to protect our popular sport from this scourge, by cooperating in joint activities, implementing common projects and exchanging information in the area of match-fixing”.

We must emphasize that experts from Europol's European Center for Financial and Economic Crime work with law enforcement authorities across the European Union to identify links between dubious parties and suspicious individuals, and to uncover organized crime groups that orchestrate these frauds against sport.

UEFA’s team of anti-match-fixing experts work on education, intelligence, investigation and cooperation with its network of 55 Integrity Officers as well as key stakeholders and partners, with particular emphasis given to preventing any issues related to match-fixing and betting irregularities.