Tipped off on alleged plans to manipulate a March 26 friendly between Jordan and Kuwait, FIFA sent investigators to the stadium in Sharjah, the emirate just north of Dubai.
FIFA says the game bore all the hallmarks of suspicious matches in Turkey and elsewhere — local referees were replaced by foreigners and the match ended in a 1-1 draw with both goals coming from penalties.
According to FIFA's early warning system of betting monitoring, online gambling sites were abuzz with action from the match. That prompted FIFA investigators to reveal their presence to organizers at halftime, short-circuiting the match-fixing scheme.
“There were the same indicators that show a consistent methodology of arranging and conducting the match,” Chris Eaton, FIFA's head of security, told The Associated Press.
“There were no media agreements, no streaming of the match, no spectators and mostly cash transactions. The referees came at the last minute.”
The UAE investigation comes as FIFA struggles to contain several corruption scandals that are threatening to undermine the integrity of the sport and has until now been the focus of a heated election campaign between FIFA President Sepp Blatter and challenger Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar. On Wednesday, FIFA said it was investigating bin Hammam for alleged bribery in his election campaign.
FIFA is also investigating claims of corruption related to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups bids, as well as alleged match fixing in various parts of the world.
In Finland, 12 players have been accused of involvement in match fixing in the domestic league. Police said the match fixing was connected to Wilson Raj Perumal, a Singaporean man being held in jail and suspected of bribing players between 2008 and this year.
Singapore has emerged in recent months as a common link in match-fixing scandals, including international friendlies set up purely for betting scams.
In one highly publicized case, a Feb. 9 tournament played in Antalya, Turkey - involving Latvia, Bolivia, Bulgaria and Estonia - resulted in all seven goals in two games coming from penalty kicks. FIFA has charged six match officials from Hungary and Bosnia in that investigation.
The March match in Sharjah was part of a tournament that also included Iraq and North Korea. Representatives of a local UAE company, Perfect Line, met up in Egypt with officials from a Singapore-based company Exclusive to set up the tournament.
Mohammed Hozain, a Perfect Line official who is based in Kuwait, said he met the Exclusive official during a visit to the Egyptian football federation. He said the company abruptly canceled the contract about 45 days before the tournament and even before any teams had been chosen to take part.
Hozain said he then went to the Kuwait federation to revive the tournament, adding that his company was only responsible for logistics and not involved in choosing the teams or the referees. That was the task of the Kuwaitis, he said.
No one from the Kuwait federation could be reached for comment. Football officials from Iraq said they saw nothing untoward but the Jordanians said they had questions once they arrived for their match.
“We talked to the UAE federation about taking the referees from UAE,” said Osama Talal, the national team manager. “Suddenly we see some referees from Africa standing next to the UAE referees. I told the company we prefer to give a chance for UAE referees because we know them. The company told us they brought referees from very far away and they are now in the stadium so they will take the match so we said `OK.' The match went normally.” The UAE federation, which initially turned down the request from Perfect Line to hold the tournament but reconsidered when pressed by the Kuwait federation, said it has since been interviewed by FIFA about the match.
“We heard a lot of history. They said there was the same type of tournament in the Far East, in Turkey and in Finland,” said former UAE Football Association General Secretary Yousef Mohammed Abdullah, who was in charge at the time of the tournament and was interviewed by FIFA investigators a day after the Jordan match.
“This was, for us, really a surprise,” he said. “This was the first time in our history we have something like this.” Perfect Line officials said they also have been interviewed by FIFA about the tournament but that investigators told them they were not a target of the probe. They said they have handed over relevant tournament documents to FIFA, though Hozain has expressed doubts whether the matches could have been on the radar of big-league bookmakers.
“How can big money come? There was nothing on TV, nothing on the Internet,” Hozain said of the Kuwait-Jordan match.
“It was a draw and the referees made no mistake for one team. Who is Jordan, and who is Kuwait? It's not like Barcelona and Real Madrid. Who would bet money on these teams?” The company's chairman, Adel Al-Amery, acknowledged hearing questions surrounding the first match but insisted his company played no role in any wrongdoing.
“We are just organizing matches and that is it,” Al-Amery said. “I know the problems with the referees. We have nothing to do with the referees. There is gambling and match-fixing all over the world but we are against this.
This is not my way.” FIFA has taken pains to show that it is taking the problem of match-fixing seriously.
It launched a $29 million project in cooperation with Interpol this month aimed at fighting match fixing and said it will continue using aggressive tactics to intervene if it senses a match is suspect - even if it effects the outcome of the game.
“FIFA's responsibility is to prevent these things happening and to protect the integrity of the game, and protect the players and officials from the criminals who fix matches,” Eaton said. “Often, we can't afford to wait for the time it takes for a criminal prosecution to go through before we take action.”
