World Crunch – Between 2004 and 2005, Zheyun Ye knocked on the door of almost every professional soccer club in Belgium. By introducing himself as a timely investor, this Chinese expat managed to convince the board of the penniless Lierse SK club to accept a check worth 370,000 euros ($500,000). Except that Zheyun Ye was not investing in the hopes the team would do well. On the contrary, what he wanted was for the players to lose, so that he could hit the jackpot by betting against the club.
Cliff Mardulier, who was Lierse SK’s goalkeeper at the time, described how this “director” got the players to cooperate. “He gave a gun to a guy, who then pointed it at me. Then he told me, ‘If we don’t lose tonight, you’ll be in big trouble.’ That evening, we lost 5-1, but he still wasn’t satisfied. After each game, we had to hand back the money he had given us.”
In just a few months, Zheyun thus managed to fix dozens of matches in Belgium, bribing players, managers or directors of different clubs. The man, who also bought a Finnish club in 2005, has disappeared into thin air and was not among the 31 people charged in Brussels court when a massive match-fixing trial opened Sept. 13.
“This whole affair showed how easy it is for an investor to buy a club and do whatever he wants with it,” explains Pim Verschuuren, researcher at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) and co-author of the white paper “Sports betting and corruption.” There are many examples of soccer clubs being used for criminal purposes. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) underlined in a 2009 report the opaqueness of the transfer market, with money often passing through offshore accounts and common practices of overbilling, which open the door to money laundering.
Sport betting among crime organizations is nothing new. In the 18th century, the rules of golf and cricket were codified so as to end betting-related corruption. But the Internet allowed for a global market for sport betting to emerge with a profusion of operators.
“Bets were often used to launder money, but with online betting this has now become common practice,” says Christian Kalb, director of CK Consulting and former marketing manager of sport betting at Française des Jeux, which operates France’s national lottery games. “Contrary to popular belief, the Internet doesn’t make it easier to trace money flows. If you take into account the gambler, the operator, the Internet servers and the bank accounts, the money can pass through several countries, which complicates judicial proceedings.”
The criminals were quick to realize that if they could control the random factor of match results, betting could become very profitable. “A drug trafficker can hope to earn a million euros ($1.3 million) a year, with all the risks it implies and the logistics it requires,” Kalb says. “But it’s possible to earn that same amount in a single fixed game in a first division match. The higher odds are on the number of goals scored. By giving 30,000 euros ($40,000) to four players of a poorly ranked team to secure a big defeat against a favorite, and by splitting up the bet so as not to attract too much attention of the operator and the regulators, they win every time. And there’s little risk too: If a gambler gets caught playing on an illegal website, it’s the operator who’s exposed.”
