Minister warns against Olympic match-fixing
According to reports, a dedicated police intelligence unit is to be introduced at this summer’s London Olympics tasked with identifying attempts to fix events.
For the first time in Olympics history, security chiefs will deploy a specialist team of officers to crack down on betting syndicates who attempt to bribe athletes into influencing the outcome of their event, the Sunday Times reported.
The unit will be headed up by the Metropolitan Police and work with the Serious Organised Crime Agency and Interpol to track suspicious gambling activity abroad, according to the newspaper.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) have also created a unit to monitor the global betting market for unusually large wagers on particular events or competitors.
When asked how big a problem Games fixing is, Robertson said: “We don’t really know but the threat is obvious and is enormous. If you listen to the president of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, he will tell you that this is the single biggest threat facing global sport.
“He’s set up a high-level group to tackle it, to look at what causes it, to look at what we might do to educate athletes better and to look at what punishments are necessary to deter athletes from undertaking it.
“I’m part of that group, as are many other sports ministers and representatives from the gambling industry and the international sports federations. But be under no illusion, this is a very real threat, we’ve seen it in this country, with the Pakistan Test cricketers and the scandal at Lord’s and it will be a very real part of the Olympics.”
Robertson said Western betting authorities were well set up to spot illegal betting activities, but feels it is a different story in some other parts of the world.
He added: “We know there are enormous illegal betting syndicates in both the Indian subcontinent and across the Far East, we know that pressure is very often exerted on athletes and indeed athletes’ families, that was sitting there in the background in the case of the young Pakistani cricketers.
“So we know it’s out there, we’ve got really good systems in this country to stop it happening here, we’ve the right sort of education programmes, the right sort of penalties for athletes and all the information systems you need between the crime agencies, the gambling commission and the police.
“What is very, very difficult to stop are these illegal syndicates that work underground in the Indian subcontinent and the Far East.”
