UEFA welcomes Greek court’s ruling on match-fixing case

UEFA welcomes the recent decision of the Greek Court of Appeal to hand out prison sentences to several individuals involved in match-fixing in Greece in 2011, with punishments ranging from 30 months to ten years in jail.

Greek judicial authorities started an investigation after UEFA submitted a list of 41 suspicious domestic matches to the Hellenic Football Federation. Such matches were identified via UEFA’s betting fraud detection system (BFDS), which, in close cooperation with the Swiss company Sportradar, monitors and analyses betting activities on about 32,000 matches in Europe each year, in both UEFA and domestic football competitions.

At the start of the investigation, UEFA collaborated with the Greek prosecutor in this case and it demonstrates that a two-way cooperation with state authorities in detecting and prosecuting criminal behaviour is key to tackling match-fixing activities.

In addition to cooperating directly with police forces and prosecutors, UEFA is also working together with the European law enforcement agency EUROPOL, as well as other national crime and gambling authorities so that criminal charges are brought in front of the law, thus also enabling UEFA to bring disciplinary cases in a much more rapid and efficient manner.