Report on race-fixing omits key findings
A report by an internal investigation team, leaked earlier this year, found evidence of a meticulous and long-running scam that had operated in Dundalk.
It also highlighted deficiencies in the original response by the Irish Greyhound Board’s headquarters after an emphatic but unusual win by a novice dog, Mays Hurryonboy, in 2009.
The two authors of the internal investigation report went on extended sick leave after their conclusions were considered by the board.
One of the investigators, the IGB’s internal auditor, said there had been an attempt to obstruct their inquiry. This was denied by the company’s chairman, Phil Meaney. A consultant was then hired to re-evaluate the investigator’s work.
The consultant’s paper-based review of the two investigators’ work was published by the IGB yesterday.
In it, the consultant said she had reviewed the material gathered by the investigators but had drawn different conclusions.
“I have made my own findings and drawn my own conclusions on the basis of the material provided to me,” she wrote.
Her report found that one high-profile race that took place in Jun 2009 was probably compromised by the running of a greyhound under a false name, Mays Hurryonboy.
She did not allude to the possibility that this was part of a wider system to rig races at the track. However, she did reveal that, on one night in Apr 2009, 31 dogs had run but, because of a compromised database, results were stored for 37.
The original investigators found that these additional results had been copied and pasted from other nights.
They said this was evidence of an ongoing scam to create fictional dogs and that it had operated for up to a year in Dundalk.
This, the investigators said, involved the running of a number of dogs under false names with fabricated race records.
Their report, which was accepted by the board but never published, also criticised the first regulatory inquiry the IGB carried out into suspicions at the track.
The investigators said the regulation inquiry “did not delve deep enough into the matter to establish the facts of what happened”.
The new report did not make findings on this issue but highlighted the fact that a stewards’ inquiry was not held on the night and that this restricted the amount of information that was available.
The IGB hired the consultant to carry out a fresh report this year after the investigators’ report was considered and adopted by the board in January.
Shortly afterwards, its contents were revealed in the Irish Examiner.
The IGB then took legal advice and decided against publishing the report because it contained opinions about what had gone on.
A statement issued yesterday said the original report would not have withstood a judicial review and the revised work had “made findings and drew conclusions based only on the objective evidence obtained by the internal investigation”.
These findings from the unpublished internal investigation into the Dundalk scandal did not make it into the final consultant’s report released by the Irish Greyhound Board:
* A meticulous scam had operated in Dundalk between May 2008 and Jun 2009 and it had been executed without detection.
* In addition to the race that highlighted the problem, a number of other fictitious trial records had been created.
* These resulted in greyhounds competing and winning their first race with significant time improvements against their qualification times.
* The IGB’s regulatory team did not delve deep enough into the incident when it was asked to investigate suspicions raised by management in Dundalk in 2009.
* The regulatory team did not interview key witnesses before completing its work.
* The video of the race, the photo finish, and the identity markings of a suspicious dog had not been looked at by the IGB’s regulatory team before it issued a press release denying the possibility that a ringer had won in Dundalk.
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