Illegal Bookies, Crooked Players & Asian Gangs

22 June 2011.

Illegal sports’ gambling exists all over the world. Even in the US, most sports gambling is still controlled by the mafia. It is a multi-billion pound industry and the profits for organised crime are comparable with the drug trade. 

22 June 2011.

Illegal sports’ gambling exists all over the world. Even in the US, most sports gambling is still controlled by the mafia. It is a multi-billion pound industry and the profits for organised crime are comparable with the drug trade. 

The world capital of illegal gambling, however, is undoubtedly Asia, where it is several times as large as the European and US gambling markets. Though accurate figures are hard to obtain, the US journal Foreign Policy estimated in 2006, that the total size of the Asian gambling market was worth $450 billion.

Oxford University’s Dr Declan Hill, the author of ‘The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime’ compares the gambling culture in Asia to prohibition-era America, where a huge illegal industry grew up to provide something US citizens desired which was banned.

Substitute gambling for alcohol and the pattern in Asia is the same. Large numbers of Asians want to gamble, but their Government will not let them, and a whole illegal industry has set up to provide a taboo product. The heads of the gangs are some of the richest men in Asia, who are supported by a huge network of bookies and agents.

The power of the Asian gangs is such that their tentacles reach out all over the world. Dr Hill, who received his doctorate from the University of Oxford for research into match-fixing in football, risked his life to expose the scale of involvement by Asian match-fixing gangs at every international football tournament.

[quote] “I exposed three great scandals in my book ‘The Fix’,” he said. “The first is the existence of marriages between local criminals and Asian match-fixers to fix European games. The second is that match-fixing gangs have been at the under-17 World Cup, the under-20 World Cup, the Women’s World Cup, the Olympic Soccer Tournament and the World Cup itself, for at least the last 20 years. They have approached many, many different players and referees to fix matches,” he said. [/quote]

Dr Hill gathered evidence for his thesis by infiltrating an Asian gang who was at the World Cup in Germany in 2006. “I did this at great personal risk. I then went to different players, referees and officials and corroborated what I saw. The evidence is deep and convincing,” he said.

There is a third aspect to the football betting scandal, which is that many high-level football officials know what is going on, but choose to look the other way.

[quote] “There were a few soccer officials who were the exception, such as Michel Platini,” said Dr Hill. “I sent him a copy of the book with a letter saying, ‘This is a controversial book, but it is not sensational. It is based on solid evidence and also my doctoral work at the University of Oxford. If there is anything I can do to help clean up the game, let me know’.”

Two weeks after receiving the book, Platini’s UEFA had established an integrity unit to protect football. “This was exactly, what I called for in the book and my media interviews. Three weeks after that, I was flown to UEFA headquarters at Nyon, in Switzerland, to meet with senior officials to give advice on how to set up these units.” [/quote]

The gangs’ influence on the football, and other sporting leagues in their Asian homelands is also enormous. Chinese President Hu Jintao described the Chinese soccer league as a “national disgrace”. Other soccer leagues in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore have had similar levels of scandal. The Taiwanese Baseball League has lost five of its original nine sides in the past few years to match-fixing scandals. Japanese Sumo wrestling is also notoriously corrupt.

[quote] “In some Asian sports leagues, it is as common for a fan to watch a fixed match as a normally played one,” said Dr Hill. [/quote]

Illegal betting has also infested the cricket world in sub-continental Asia, where the game is a religion to millions of fans. According to police assessments, illegal betting on cricket in India is worth more than $5 billion per year, although other commentators put the figure much higher. The illegal betting has also inspired a lucrative money-laundering business to foreign banks and accounts.  

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Corruption in Cricket

One of Pakistan’s great cricket journalists, the 73-year-old Qamar Ahmed – who has reported on over 1,000 international matches – said: [quote] “In India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, illegal gambling is endemic and rampant and it is mostly focused on cricket. In India, only gambling on horse racing is legal, which is why bookies lure the players with huge sums to help them make a huge profit.” [/quote]

A number of high-profile international players have been involved in match-fixing, or spot-fixing. “They are paid huge amounts of money, which is mainly for ‘spot-fixing’. This is when a specific part of a game is fixed. In cricket this could be the timing of a no ball, or a wide delivery. Match fixing is rare, although it has happened on a number of occasions in Tests, but mainly in limited over games,” said Ahmed.

In the same way as the Asian gangs work in tandem with local crooks to corrupt the football world, Indian bookmakers have spread corruption around the world and infiltrated international teams.

The most famous scandal occurred in 2000, when Delhi Police released the transcript of a conversation between the then South African captain Hansie Cronje and an Indian bookie. In the wake of the scandal, three international captains – Cronje, Salim Malik of Pakistan and India’s Mohammad Azharuddin – received life-time bans, and several other players were fined.

And there are have been many other instances. In 2004, former New Zealand skipper Stephen Fleming was approached by an Indian sports promoter, and in 2008 West Indies batsman Marlon Samuels was banned for two years for passing information on to an Indian bookie.

The most recent scandal involved members of the Pakistan team on their 2010 tour of England. Two fast bowlers, 18-year-old Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif, were found guilty of spot-fixing no balls during the Lord’s Test match in August.

An International Cricket Council (ICC) Corruption Tribunal handed out bans of seven years to Asif, five years to Amir and 10 years to their captain, Salman Butt.

The exposure did not prevent the bookmakers persisting with their approaches to Pakistani players. A few months after the England tour, in November 2010, the Pakistani wicketkeeper Zulqarnain Haider fled the team hotel in Dubai hours before a game against South Africa. He flew to London where he applied for asylum after claiming to have been threatened for not co-operating in fixing the one-day series. Police later corroborated his story and arrested eight bookmakers.

 

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The Bookmaker’s Bait

 

What happened to Haider was an example of the ruthlessness of the betting gangs. [quote] “Once involved with the gangs it is difficult to get away. They will threaten your life,” said Ahmed. “The Pakistani bookmaker Hanif Cadbury was shot dead in South Africa in the 1990s because of not paying up betting money. In another terrible incident, the father of the great Pakistani cricketer Wasim Akram was kidnapped and a huge sum was paid before his release.” [/quote]

Ahmed says the bookmakers will try many things to ensnare the players. [quote] “Sometimes, perhaps unknowingly, bookies are introduced to star players by journalists and photographers. But other journalists are blatantly corrupt and have taken money for making introductions. There are also instances of players and their families received threatening calls if they refuse to cooperate,” said Ahmed. [/quote]    

At one time, cricketers on the sub-continent were poorly paid relative to their English and Australian counterparts, which was one cause of corruption, but this is no longer the case, Ahmed says. [quote] “The sub-continental players live in a culture of greed and corruption more than any other country, except perhaps some nations in South America. Corruption has invaded all walks of life. It is like a plague and nothing is done without ‘Bakshish’ (backhanders). In this culture, things move at a snails-pace unless money is thrown at corrupt officers, ministers and bureaucrats.” [/quote]

Ahmed says legalising betting would help to control the problem, but would not cure it. “Betting is legal in Australia and New Zealand, but things still turn nasty at times and many jockeys have been put behind bars for accepting money illegally from bookies,” he said.

Spot-fixing would also not be prevented by legalisation. Illegal gangs could still profit from being able to forecast the small details of the game which punters can bet on. 

There are, of course, other sound reasons to legalise betting on the sub-continent. It would give the government some control over the industry. A Gambling Commission could force bookmakers to register and abide by regulations.

But the likelihood of betting being legalised in India would appear to be slim. One commentator said Indian politicians do not object to the black economy because it helps them to get funding for their campaigns.

And Dr Hill agrees that legalisation is unlikely in most Asian countries. [quote] “Most gambling in Asia is illegal – even in Hong Kong and Singapore. But the people who control this ‘illegal’ trade are immensely powerful and politically connected. They are not going to allow their industry to become legal.” [/quote]

David Smith

EconomyWatch.com