Football referee Ibrahim Chaibou walked into a bank "carrying a bag filled with as much as $100,000 in $100 bills," according to Hill & Longman of the N.Y. TIMES.
Later that night in May '10, Chaibou "refereed an exhibition match between South Africa and Guatemala in preparation for the World Cup." Even to the casual fan, "his calls were suspicious." Chaibou "had been chosen to work the match by a company based in Singapore that was a front for a notorious match-rigging syndicate." FIFA’s investigative report and related documents, which were obtained by the N.Y Times and "have not been publicly released, raise serious questions about the vulnerability of the World Cup to match fixing." The tournament opens June 12 in Brazil.
The report found that "the match-rigging syndicate and its referees infiltrated the upper reaches of global soccer in order to fix exhibition matches and exploit them for betting purposes." The FIFA report said that as many as 15 matches "were targets, including a game between the United States and Australia." Problems that could now shadow this month's World Cup include:
- FIFA’s investigators concluded that the fixers had probably been aided by South African football officials.
- A FIFA spokesperson said Friday that the investigation into South Africa was continuing, but no one interviewed for this article spoke of being contacted.
- Many national football federations with teams competing in Brazil are just as vulnerable to match-fixing as South Africa’s was: They are financially shaky, in administrative disarray and politically divided.
South African matches "were not the only suspect ones." Europol, the European Union’s police intelligence agency, said last year that "there were 680 suspicious matches played globally from 2008 to 2011, including World Cup qualifying matches and games in some of Europe’s most prestigious leagues and tournaments."
Former FIFA investigator Terry Steans, who wrote the report on South Africa, said, "There are no checks and balances and no oversight. It’s so efficient and so under the radar" (
N.Y. TIMES, 5/31).
