European football's governing body UEFA has called in police organization Europol to investigate possible match-fixing by Asian betting syndicates in top-flight European football, Der Spiegel magazine is reporting in its Monday edition.
According to the magazine five UEFA officials visited the Europol headquarters in The Hague during early November to handover a 96-page dossier outlining suspicions that games were being fixed.
The dossier covered a total of 26 games, including three in the third preliminary round of the Champions League, two in the UEFA Cup and one in the qualifiers for Euro 2008.
Under investigation. The Croatian soccer team (Photo: AP)
Fifteen of the suspect games were played during the current season with the other 11 between July 2005 and November 2006, Der Spiegel said.
They mostly concerned teams from eastern and southern Europe notably Bulgaria, Georgia, Serbia and Croatia but also the Baltic states in the north.
The magazine said the UEFA report detailed millions of euros being pocketed by Asian betting syndicates based on the results of these games.
UEFA officials confirmed that at their request, Europol were investigation 15 games in which match-fixing was suspected.
The officials also said that UEFA president Michel Platini, in collaboration with the European Union's Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini, had agreed to organize a meeting next year in Brussels into match-fixing, corruption and money-laundering in football.
Former Football Association disciplinary chief Graham Bean said he believes the suspected fixing of 15 European games this season could "potentially (be) one of the most serious things that has ever happened in world football".
"These are clearly exceptionally serious allegations, but having said that they will be extremely difficult to investigate… Clearly for UEFA to pass this report across (to the police) they must have evidence of some kind," he added.
UEFA have not put any time-frame on when the investigation might be complete.
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