The Art Of Whistleblowing

Slavoj Žižek: "A market economy thrives on inequality so self-interest will always triumph over the public good."
Hence, for the integrity of the system, whistleblowers are essential.

This is the first of three posts addressing whistleblowing both in football and across a broader systemic base.

In football, matchfixing is rife - in Europe, 60% of associations have experienced scandals in the last two years and yet there is effectively no sports governance and there are no reliable bodies analysing such corruptions as all have inappropriate relationships to the various loci of criminalities. 
Moreover, there is a culture of omertà within the loop where matchfixing is accepted and serves as an illicit currency within the game.

In parallel, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) together with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) give corporations the power to trump national sovereignty and individual rights.
Such abuses may only be addressed by bottom up whistleblowing and hacktivism.
Otherwise the outcome will be a totalitarianism founded on corrupted institutions and a world order devised by and for a global corporate elite.
Globalised markets need globalised regulation.

Whistleblowers should not exist.
Their work should be undertaken by regulators, police, governments and investigative journalists within the Fourth Estate.
But the recent exponential and global growth of whistleblowers across all economic sectors suggests that these entities are a part of the problem rather than the cure.

As there can be no dependence on the law, whistleblowers need to develop skills so that they are able to be more effective in bringing about change by taking the issues to a wider audience.
And this needs to be achieved whilst surfing the zeitgeist of corruption (together with the insider and public perceptions of such corruption) so that personal security profiles may be maintained robustly.
And there is very limited support within the system for whistleblowers - indeed there are very lucrative merry-go-rounds involving institutions, market makers, regulators and even some whistleblowing bodies/charities (eg Public Concern at Work or the FA's Sports Betting Integrity Unit or Federbet).

Corruption forensics and sousveillance are at the core of all whistleblowing and whistleblowers oscillate between black, grey and white markets in their detection work. The reality to be modelled is neo-Bayesian, complex and in a constant state of chaotic flux with the resultant holographic entity needing to be updated in real-time. There are strategic choices that need to be made in order to achieve the best outcomes - in some cases direct action and Fifth Estate activism and, in other cases, realpolitik and incrementalism via the Fourth Estate. 
It all depends on the maturity and solidity of the corrupt mechanism being addressed.

Security is paramount as is the ability to operate invisibly off the radar of the system - I spent over a decade with no bank accounts, no mortgages, disguised rentals, mobile offices across three countries, no utility provision, no telecommunications contracts, numerous PAYG mobiles, no earnings, no tax, numerous parallel internet networks (some encrypted and undertaking creative hacktivism), complex travel arrangements etc.

Protection is paramount all along the continuum from sources to whistleblowers to campaigners, journalists and publishers as any weakness results in a lowest common denominator quantum leap in risk.

We operate via a global cellular network of individuals and well-connected action groups with shared aims and layered security based on the strategies of single issue direct action groups like the Animal Liberation Front.
Face to face security is embedded by selective choice of meetings (we have pulled out of meetings with bodies on numerous occasions through our assessment of their hidden agendas and liaisons) and all meetings are recorded and undertaken with attendant security on hand. Negotiations and the sharing of knowledge are filtered via isolationist boundaries and an assessment of the vertically integrated hierarchies involved. And all meetings are approached with an array of potential strategies both to achieve our goals and to destabilise inappropriate behaviours from other parties at the table.

Creative whistleblowing requires enhanced anonymity with enhanced strategy and protection.

Corruption in football directly mirrors that in the global financial system and much modelling of these infrastructures share similarities. 
But there is a time lag. 
So, whereas insider trading was made illegal in financial markets in Britain half a century ago, it is at the very root of the issue of integrity in football.
Furthermore, the same techniques exist for the hiding of fraudulent behaviour (both with regard to matchfixing and abuses of the transfer market). 
Money is laundered via very particular Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs) using a small network of morally illegitimate onshore/offshore legal entities (in Britain, Panama and elsewhere).

The money sloshing around this shadow system does not yield any tax benefits to the remainder of the planet but merely serves as a sociopathic power grab.
And the figures are colossal.
According to the Tax Justice Network $21 trillion to $32 trillion of private financial wealth is held offshore. $1 trillion is syphoned off from developing countries per annum while the detection rate for tax evasion is just 1% (about the same as the declared instances of matchfixing at 0.7%).
As over 60% of international trade takes place within multinationals, the options for abusive inversion capitalism are considerable as there are no obstacles to the financialisation of the companies nor the creative tax evasion undertaken across different tax environments.
Meanwhile, over 50% of the world's adults lack bank accounts.

The global turnover on football betting markets is estimated at £1 trillion per year.
This cashflow is outside any system - third party ownership and suitcases of money with regard to transfer market corruptions and the stealing of monies off other market players and operators with regard to matchfixing.
This is inversion capitalism in extremis, football has merely become a poker table for psychopathic corruptions involving vast amounts of money.

The solutions are not rocket science.
In football, just six core areas need to be addressed to markedly reduce matchfixing (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/how-to-solve-match-fixing-once-and-for.html)

The key changes will be incremental in any future reality but the changes will still have impact - the adjustment of corruption from being a rigged certainty to a probabilistic outcome will peripheralise the gains that might be achieved via matchfixing.

In the wider global economy, we need openness on corporate ownership and all secrecy jurisdictions, unitary taxation, no tax havens, no unpublished accounts or limited tax disclosures, no use of consolidated financial statements to disguise offshore transactions, no nominees, the banning of offshore trusts, an end to banking secrecy and proper reasons for miscreants to think twice.

When a whistleblower (Jeremy Hammond) faces a 10 year jail sentence for disclosing the inappropriate behaviours of US geopolitical intelligence giant Stratfor while Stratfor is immune to prosecution, what message does this send out to future whistleblowers?
And surely it does not help that the husband of the judge in this case (Loretta Preska) works with Stratfor clients!

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014 
  
Follow us on Twitter @FootballisFixed

Who Regulates The Regulators?

The Ponzi pyramid of self-justification that underpins all free market structures is always a part of the problem rather than a part of the cure.

Who guards the guardians?
Who governs the governors?
Who moderates the moderators?
Who regulates the regulators?

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is not fit for purpose.
Nine out of 12 board members were simply parachuted across from the board of the disbanded Financial Services Authority (FSA) - that's the FSA that failed to suitably regulate the banks prior to and during the 2007/08 crash.
The FSA's regulatory style was so light touch as to be reiki.
Reiki regulation!

The FSA was a prime example of regulatory capture - a form of political corruption that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.

In response, the FCA must be seen to be regulating with the utmost integrity.
Some hope.
Bizarrely, the FCA created a false market in major insurers' shares after botching a press briefing - the share prices of major insurers plunged after the Telegraph published the story.
A 225 page report released this week goes further: "The strategy and manner in which [the media strategy] was pursued was... high risk, poorly supervised and inadequately controlled. When it went wrong, the FCA's reaction was seriously inadequate and fell short of the standards expected of those it regulates."
The regulator tilted the markets!

And the FCA response is to repay some executive bonuses received in an extended window of self-justification and to immediately rush out a long delayed report into the mis-selling of annuities in a blatant display of exactly the sort of public relations and branding that regulatory bodies should not be in business of needing to undertake.

But similar structures are the norm - other recent examples include OFWAT mistakenly overestimating water companies' capital costs when setting price levels and then refusing to impose London Stock Exchange disclosure requirements on non-stock market listed companies, or PricewaterhouseCoopers selling tax avoidance on an industrial scale with the strategy only coming to public knowledge via internal leaks.

Why is it nearly always whistleblowers and (Wiki)leakers but very rarely regulatory bodies and institutional self-policing that reveal the financial miscreants?.

The big picture is one of pure Randian psychopathy - there's minimal red tape to act as an obstacle for the steady flow of sociopathic outsiders to join the psychopathic insiders as cowboy capitalism races to the bottom of its barrel...
... but in the world of football, the situation is worse - neo-Randian!.

Nothing is regulated on any primary level of operation and there are supportive and corrupted flow networks integrated globally to prevent any hope of integrity rearing its head.

All six of the primary bodies allegedly looking into football integrity and matchfixing are compromised in their purpose via their ownership.
Indeed, in certain cases, a more motley crew of interested parties could not have been created even if one had set out explicitly with such purpose!
Fragmented cartels of corruption!

Football governance verges on the non-existent and, even at best, is merely a branding and self-justification process.

Certain entities and structures are systemically corrupt...
... in fact, I'll rewrite that sentence - there are very few bodies and networks in global football that are not systemically corrupt!
Regulation is invisible or malleable self-regulation that equates to no regulation at all - agents, dark pools, betting markets, insider trading, matchfixing, money laundering, third party ownership, mainstream media compliance in a restricted narrative while, once again, whistleblowers and (Wiki)leakers expose, bottom-up, what any decent system would implement top-down.

Inversion capitalism - asset stripping and financial profiteering from the monetising of a brand, tax avoidance and evasion, antisocial competition practices with minimal regulation (for self-justification), alongside state punishment for 5th Estate types who get in the way - the Obama administration has started more prosecutions against whistleblowers than all presidents combined over the last century.
20 whistleblowers have been murdered in India in the last five years.

And the corrupt operations in the distorted infrastructures attract disproportionate investment as investors understand that increased returns are gained by psychopathic control in a lightly regulated marketplace, compounding up the cycles of corruption over time.

FIFA, the FCA, UEFA, PwC, the Premier League, Barclays, the Glazers, the FA Sports Betting Integrity Unit, Gestifute, Goldman Sachs, all these oil companies from interesting geopolitical locations that are buying up British football teams, private equity, dark pools, the control of whistleblowing bodies by those who should be whistleblown, derivatives markets, offshore financial centres and markets, NGO-lite structures etc - pure neo-Bayesian corruption entities beyond the reach of any economic theory as such theory may only be reactive to this juggernaut of inversion free-marketry where there are no rules.

Who regulates the regulators?

And why don't regulators regulate?

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014   

Follow us on Twitter @FootballisFixed  

Omertà

The two women who acted as whistleblowers over the multiple corruptions within FIFA have been publicly traduced by Judge Hans-Joachim Eckert.
Bonita Mersiades and Phaedra Almajid both now live in fear for their families and themselves.
These FIFA corruptions have effectively been whitewashed in a secret report at the expense of the lives of two women (Almajid now has FBI protection).

This will no doubt discourage any future moral and ethical stances over the utter lack of integrity in global football just as the treatments of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange would tend to make any political whistleblower think twice.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the FIFA Affair (Qatargate) is that it is a clear indication of how the locus of football criminality has shifted towards the blackest of markets in recent years. In the current scenario, Michael Garcia is being painted as a white knight riding to the rescue against the smoke-filled backroom deals and payments of bribes and other enhancing consumerisms of FIFA.

We discussed this in a previous article when Garcia was appointed to this role: "A parallel example of murkiness is at FIFA where the Secretary General of Interpol, Ronald Noble, supported the appointment of Michael Garcia as FIFA chief investigator of corruption when Garcia's review of the FIFA/ISL scandal is seen as a cover up by Reform consultant Michael Pieth and FIFA judge Hans-Joachim Eckert."

Manus manum lavat.

So we have a standard Italian structure being the cover up of choice - football needs a mani pulite (clean hands) approach to dealing with corruption.

But the cover ups spread further.
There are four primary bodies addressing matchfixing in world football - Interpol, Europol, Early Warning and Federbet.
None are fit for purpose and all have private hidden agendas.
If an individual chooses to whistleblow a corrupted match to any of these bodies, the most likely action is inaction.

And the national associations and leagues are no better.
We would not dream of disclosing our evidences of matchfixing in the Premier League to Richard Scudamore or the FA.
And, higher up the feeding chain Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga, understands that presenting evidence of matchfixing in Spain results in absolutely no reaction.

And over the last two days in London, the FA has launched the Sports Betting Integrity Forum with inputs from all the main British/Gibraltan bodies who are only concerned about matchfixing when they are outside the loop of insider trading.
All five bookmakers involved either accept insider money and/or actively orchestrate criminalities.

On the bases established by these whitewashes, the foundations of future corruptions are built.

Yesterday, Narayanaswami Srinivasan was laughably cleared of orchestrating matchfixing and spotfixing in IPL cricket matches in 2013 despite the evidence of taped conversations and his close alliances with the underground bookmaking world.
Earlier this year, he had remarkably been appointed as chairman of the International Cricket Council despite the scandals swirling around him.
What message does this send to the participants in the new IPL football expansion (and, by the way, it is surely not totally surprising that the three main English participants in this competition are Michael Chopra, Peter Reid and that undischarged bankrupt of dubious integrity, David James)?

These sporting corruptions parallel clearly with the world of mainstream capitalism and offshore financial centres.
For example, Grace Perez-Navarro of the OECD thinks that money laundering will be a historical anomaly by 2018.
It won't.
Lack of staff, lack of backing, lack of expertise, lack of regulation, lack of political will and yet to be created distortions of integrity will see to that.

Similarly amusing is the hyperreality that the UK police are to utilise the expertise of the Royal Bank of Scotland to address financial fraud in markets...
... that would be the same Royal Bank of Scotland that has just been found guilty of currency benchmark manipulations!

Manus manum lavat.

Global corruption requires global action and global regulation, not internalised double-teaming.

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014    

Follow us on Twitter @FootballisFixed 

State Of The (Football) Nation

Matchfixing corrupts.
Absolute matchfixing corrupts absolutely.

From the mid-nineties onwards, the Asian underground markets exercised total control over English football.
In the last four years, that control has been grasped by a cartel of inappropriates from the UK and its offshore territories.
Neither of these structures is to the benefit of football.
Both create corruption.

• There are referees working with bookmakers and agents to manufacture match outcomes to the financial benefit of their insider trading.
• There are titles and trophies determined entirely by corruption.
• There are managers taking backhanders from agents to pick their clients to mutual benefit.
• There are bookmakers who own football clubs and who utilise this control to fix matches.
• There are individuals within the PGMOL who liaise with criminals and matchfixers in the selection of referees.
• There are individuals passing the fit and proper persons test that are entirely unfit and entirely improper.
• There are crime syndicates and mafia groups who takeover football clubs for fraud, money laundering and matchfixing.
• There are fragmented cartels of football agents who pool their players on the pitch to land huge insider gambles.
• There are broadsheet, tabloid and tv journalists who lubricate these corruptions via public relations abuses posing as journalism.
• There are bookmakers who accept insider trading and matchfixing as such knowledge is regarded as preferential information in the corrupted marketplace.
• There are numerous individuals throughout the game who utilise threats, menaces and coercion as standard business practice.
• There are betting patterns that link these corruptions with their perpetrators.
• There are administrators who facilitate these corruptions in support of their belief in laissez faire capitalism,
• There are many bookmakers who refuse to pay out winnings.
• There are rewards for historical matchfixing and corruptions with a career in media providing disinformation to fans.
• There are rampant abuses of third party ownership by agents which frequently borders on a slave trade.
• There are widespread abuses of performance enhancing substances (and their related masking agents).
• There are a whole array of under the table payments where tax is avoided (either by bungs or the selling of inside information etc).
• There are networks of individuals illegally hacking IT systems in search of valuable information.
• There are numerous examples of referees (and other peripherals) whose wealth is not explained by their legitimate earnings.
• There are a cabal of mainstream television media who accommodate matchfixing and corruption.
• There are more criminalised goalkeepers in English football than any other primary territory in Europe. 
• There are no regulations or governmental action preventing these corruptions.
• There are fortunes being made at the expense of the integrity of the game.

English football is systemically corrupt...
... and extensively corrupt in the particular.

We have access via our consultancies to the betting patterns on these events.
And for many dubious penalties/sendings off, for example, there are equivalent betting sources and patterns ensuring profits for the criminals.

Think on this the next time you witness refereeing, goalkeeping, media or bookmaker inputs that appear at odds with the integrity of the game.

Oh, and here is a photo of John Colquhoun.

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed or check out our new blog Omertà on the criminalities underpinning the Premier League and the Scottish Premier League - http://trichotomoustriptychities.blogspot.co.uk/

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014 

Follow us on Twitter @FootballisFixed   

The Ongoing Takeover Of British Football By The New Global Financial Capitalist Elite

One of the most striking features of football in recent times has been the takeover of leading clubs by investors who would not appear, on the surface, to have any real interest in the business of football.

Consequently, the wave of American takeovers of clubs like Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, Sunderland and Aston Villa is the subject of this post.

In the eyes of this particular new breed of owners, it is no longer necessary to win titles and trophies.
The creation of short term cash is everything. 
If competitions can be won as well then this is fine and dandy but club performance on the field is always secondary to financial achievement off of it. 

This puts such owners at odds with the fans.

Dr Jack Rasmus: "The [global financial capitalist] elite are deepening their control of non-financial companies and are increasingly directing those companies toward profits growth from financial manipulation as the primary corporate activity... Instead of making profits by making real things that require real investment and employ real people, the focus of global capitalism is increasingly toward more financial asset investment."

Thus real profit is being surpassed by generating forms of money capital as profit.

It is the US that is behind the majority of this activity.

Financial gains may be 'created' by manipulation of the US tax code through the utilisation of 'inversion' capitalism and, additionally, shadow bankers and their financial speculators also markedly gain from the structure.
Even greater gains come from financial speculation that benefit other investors, major shareholders and senior management.
Rasmus: "Lower taxes for the US corporation from the inversion means more retained corporate cash on hand, and the prospect of more future earnings as well, all of which in turn drives up the company’s stock price. That makes the company even more attractive to investors like hedge funds and equity firms, which buy up big blocks of both the purchasing and purchased companies’ stock. Banks and shadow bankers that jump into the process at the outset, buying up company stock in the process, also provide original funding for the company’s purchase. Others jump into the stock as the acquisition deal proceeds. Once concluded, early and latecomers both then reap a nice capital gain from the eventual stock price appreciation that almost always follows the deal... So all levels of financial speculators benefit from these ‘inversion’ deals—shadow bank investors, hedge fund managers, big stockholders, and top corporate managers with significant stock holdings and compensation—all realise big capital gains from stock price manipulation that is at the core of tax inversion deals. Again, it is not just about tax avoidance; it is about stock price manipulation and huge capital gains."

Taking Manchester United as our primary example.
The leveraged buyout by the Glazers imposed significant annual interest repayments on the club.
This outflow of tens of millions of pounds annually prevents significant reinvestment in the transfer market with the club being restricted to players in the £20-35m strata as opposed to the level of players being purchased by Real Madrid or Barcelona, for example.
Ronaldo out...
... Fellaini in!

Additionally transfer activity is delayed in a brinksmanship fashion to produce the maximum benefit to short term cash flow. Last season this resulted in the majority of transfer targets failing by end of transfer window and there is now pressure on Ed Woodward to make the necessary purchases this season.
Many of these targets will not arrive as the selling club will price their assets according to Man Utd's 'need'.

But, to the Glazers, Manchester United's failure to purchase star players, land the title, win any trophies, qualify for Champions League or Europa League is entirely trumped by the £750m 10 year Adidas deal that produces lots and lots of cash.

Other takeovers are of even more questionable integrity due to the owners' interests in betting markets.
In these cases, the generation of cash by match manipulation frequently competes with integrity on the pitch.

Inversion capitalism is the lovechild of private equity where short term profits were generated by taking over a company, asset stripping its value and selling on the shell at a significant profit.
Indeed, inversion deals are merely a slightly longer term version of private equity on a global stage.

And there are now copycat structures popping up all over the British game.

If you apply the above template to Celtic, for example, many of the same bullet points appear.

• The selling of players at significant profit (Wanyama, Forster, Hooper, McGeady, Ki, Ledley, Wilson and Watt bringing in £40m gain to the club) without the necessary reinvestment or the strategy of bringing in numerous players on loan without any capital outlay (or future profits). Or club loyalty.
• Refusal to invest for Champions League progression as the financial returns of such investment are uncertain.
• Satisfaction with winning SPL ad finitum rather than strategic planning towards the future European Super League as these potential profits are too far into the future for short-termist thinkers.
• The scheduling of pointless pre-season friendlies all around Europe for financial gains rather than developing a sense of 'home' at Murrayfield during period that Parkhead was hired out for profit. If Legia Warszawa hadn't messed up, this season would be over already in a footballing sense.
• Low wage, minimum wage, living wage issues at the bottom of the club hierarchy.
• The linkage to criminalised agents of highly questionable integrity both with regard to transfer markets and betting markets.

There are numerous other modular structures to serve the same or similar ends - the Abramovich Trophy Club Model, the Carson Yeung/ Thaksin Shinawatra Asian Betting Market Model, the Dubai/Mumbai Betting Market Model, the Abu Dhabi Global Franchise Model, the Real Madrid/Gestifute Model, the ADO Den Haag/United Vansen Model, the Leeds United Model MkI, II and III, the Bet365/Stoke City Model, the Stellar Agents Model, the John Colquhoun/Jonathan Moss Model as well as varieties of Sevco Self-Harming Models.

None of these capitalist matrices have the interests of the particular club at heart.
All are geared to the short term financial gains of a criminalised global finance capitalist elite.

But, what the hell do we care?

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014

Follow us on Twitter @FootballisFixed 

Insider Trading Is Not Necessarily Match Fixing

Last night was an incredibly depressing defeat.
It was a humiliating and, most likely, an immensely costly loss.
But it wasn't match fixing and it wasn't corruption and it wasn't illegal.

Anyone watching the match could see that things weren't right - a woeful defence, some astonishingly poor performances, a total lack of fitness, a referee with a liking for our friends from Ajax, key players absolutely drained after World Cup exertions, Scott Brown's absence, the negative impact of playing a meaningless friendly against St Pauli instead of resting up for a match that might define Celtic's season...

These are not conspiracies or criminalities, they are real fundamental facts affecting the outcome of a football match.

An insider might choose to bet and profit from a combination of this public and private knowledge plus any extra nuggets he might possess.
This isn't illegal.
It doesn't even mean that the insider isn't professionally focused on the club.
It simply means that he wishes to benefit financially from his privileged position.
And it does not mean the match is bent...
... but it does mean that the game is.

Some stuff...

• Some English Premier League matches have global betting turnover in the billions of pounds. You can get millions of pounds accepted by brokers in Asia on such games without them even blinking. Referees earn less than £2K per week. Referees are a major feature in virtually all corruption episodes around the world. Match fixing results.
• Players have lifelong allegiances to their agents that surpasses any club loyalty (with some honourable exceptions).Some agents also bet professionally. In some games, all of a defence will be represented by one or two agents or more than 50% of the players on the pitch will be represented by four agents, for example. Some agents work very closely together in a cartel fashion. Match fixing results.
• The brands demand certain outcomes. Brazil winning the opening match of the World Cup, say, or the existence of certain referees past and present in the SPL, or UEFA wishing for G14 powerhouse Juventus to be eased past Celtic in the Champions League courtesy of Undiano Mallenco. This results in match fixing.
• It would be easier to list the teams in the English Premier League and Championship that don't have very active betting activities associated with them than those that are legitimate. Imagine the scenario where a team is playing an end of season match of no consequence and the owner of the club is a bookmaker who has significant (and ethically awkward) betting market liabilities on the game. For the bottom line of the club, the less ethical route is much more financially rewarding. This is match fixing and it isn't illegal.
• Bookmakers, brokers, market makers, dark pool traders, market professionals, regulators, the police, UEFA and FIFA all recognise that match fixing is massively widespread. But there is no global regulation against insider trading (whether match fixing or just taking profit from insider knowledge). Market platforms seek the trades of insiders as it improves their market knowledge and hence their financial returns. They actively trade this 'knowledge' elsewhere in the market. This isn't illegal. It is just high stakes poker. No bookie wants to be left with the liability when the game kicks off.
• In horseracing, there is no incentive to throw the Derby or the Grand National due to the kudos and cash that results. However, the 3:15 at Catterick on a Tuesday afternoon when a leading bookmaker has massive liabilities on the 4/7 favourite is a different affair. This is fixing in another sport but the structure is identical to modern football. Except that the rewards in football are far far greater.
• In financial markets, insider trading used to be legal in Britain until around 50 years ago. A broker could have lunch with an executive and short sell the executive's company based on private information from this encounter. This was market fixing and it wasn't illegal. But it is now. Football needs global regulation to tackle match fixing, corruption, money laundering and the tax avoidance associated with these practices. FIFA should be taking on this role rather than awarding World Cups to countries who (allegedly) shoot down passenger planes and those who murder their immigrant workforce via medieval employment practices in tropical heat.

We form part of a global cellular grouping of individuals from all areas of the game who are not satisfied with the manner in which money people are taking over the game.
We have developed proprietary software for monitoring and analysing financial and betting markets.
We explore the dark net for underground and dark pool operations.
We are frequently appalled by what we find but, historically, there have been few global bodies willing to stand up to the rampant corruption.
We also undertake consultancies - last season I worked for a German team and I'm now working with a body monitoring match fixing in football.
We do nothing illegal.
We just try to undermine corruption in football.

There is a much more determined effort by the likes of Interpol to address match fixing (see last blog post).
But match fixing is not just a problem in the Asian underground.
It is everywhere.

Of course, whether you accept that the above structures are demolishing the game is up to you.
We merely put some stuff in front of you and you can make up your own minds - Glaswegians (both Celtic and Sevco) have enough nous to understand match fixing and corruption when they see it.

But remember.
Nobody did anything illegal prior to the defeat in Warszawa.
Nothing to see there...
... apart from an inept performance, poorly planned, strategically stunted, financially disastrous and interestingly refereed.

http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/how-to-solve-match-fixing-once-and-for.html

http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/football-markets-are-not-only-markets.html

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014

Follow us on Twitter @FootballisFixed  

SOGA, So Good

                               Hooded Hoodlums of Global Matchfixing on the Perp Walk

The Interpol SOGA V (SOccer GAmbling Five) operation against illegal gambling during the FIFA World Cup 2014 netted 1400 arrests, $2.2bn in wagers and $12m in cash plus the arrest of leading triad operator Paul Phua.
Over 1000 raids were carried out across 6 South East Asian countries.
Additionally, as the World Cup was winding down, the FBI and Nevada Gaming Control Board agents raided an illegal sports betting operation working out of a suite in Caesars Palace.
In this case, 4 Malaysians and 4 Chinese were arrested.

This is impressive but only represents the tip of the iceberg.

One is able to place bets of $10m on Premier League games in the Far East without the broker blinking over the bet.

Additionally, a majority of underground trading on global football matches now takes place in opaque, offshore and non-regulated dark pools.

SOGA's five operations in the last 7 years have yielded $5.7bn in illegal bets - this is less than the Asian underground turnover on one Manchester United v Chelsea match! 

Considering the size and relative success of this Interpol operation, it is quite astonishing that no coverage whatsoever has been given to the arrests and the issues of World Cup matchfixing in the English press.
As in Asian operations, match corruptions in England are orchestrated by cabals of referees, bookmakers, players and agents but extensive efforts are made by the English matchfixers and their accomplices in the mainstream media to avoid scrutiny of such loci of corruption - two World Cup co-commentators with knowledge and/or experience of matchfixing (one BBC and the other ITV) were under strict instructions never to question any refereeing decision or playing performance of dubious integrity!

When will Interpol address matchfixing in England?
Is it an issue that some perpetrators are policemen?

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014

How The FIFA World Cup 2014 Was Fixed

With our partners, we have produced a consultancy document indicating the various ways in which the FIFA World Cup failed to be a tournament of integrity both in the particular and in the holistic.

We share the 16 section titles of this document with you.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Matchfixing and Corruption linked to Roy Hodgson and England

The Role of English Media in Corruptions orchestrated within the England set up

Matchfixing linked to British Agents and English Bookmakers

The Role of Proxies to disguise Insider Trading - the inability or unwillingness of Europol, Federbet and Early Warning to detect Insider Trading

An Assessment of German Strategies in comparison with England 

Matchfixing orchestrated by the FIFA Family  

Cabals of FIFA Referees working to achieve agreed outcomes via specific networks of Corruption

Insider Gambling by certain Referees

Issues with the selection of Referees being in the hands of Massimo Busacca

Exposing the Five Teams that utilised Performance Enhancing Substances

20% of FIFA World Cup Matches were Fixed - We reveal the full list

The Role of Offshore Dark Pool Markets in Matchfixing

A Thorough Analysis of Betting Patterns on all 64 matches

Areas of Impact of the South East Asian Markets and comparisons of control exerted by other Dark Pool Markets

A Listing of 30 Players involved in Matchfixing

A Bayesian Analysis on the Impact of the World Cup on Sabermetrics and the Transfer Markets

Configurative Analyses of Fitness, Tiredness and Travel and the Impact on World Cup as a Spectacle
__________________________________________________________________________________

We are auctioning off one copy of this extensive consultancy document to industry professionals.

The document not only provides total coverage of the manner in which World Cup 2014 was fixed but also allows parallel analyses to be undertaken for all future tournaments.

Bids should be logged via Twitter Direct Message on the @FootballisFixed account by July 31st 2014.
The winning bidder will be informed immediately thereafter.
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© Football is Fixed 2006-2014

The Shit Squad

We asked our Asian broker, a UEFA administrator, our publishers and a former Norwegian international to choose the worst players, referee and manager at the World Cup in Brazil.

The selections were made based on matchfixing, links to insider trading bookmakers and/or agents, motivational deficiencies and lack of professionalism.

Here is what they came up with...
... the Shit Squad.

Manager Roy Hodgson (England)

Goalkeepers Hart (England), Rui Patricio (Portugal), Casillas (Spain)

Defenders Jagielka (England), David Luiz (Brazil), Pepe (Portugal), Assou Ekotto (Cameroon), Johnson (England), Ramos (Spain), Baines (England)

Midfielders W. Palacios (Honduras), Gerrard (England), Song (Cameroon), Katsouranis (Greece), Henderson (England), Fernandinho (Brazil), Luiz Gustavo (Brazil), Meireles (Portugal), Alonso (Spain)

Forwards Fred (Brazil), Suarez (Uruguay), Nani (Portugal), Boateng (Ghana)

Referee Carballo (Spain)

12 of the squad played in the English Premier League last season (9 in Liverpool or Manchester!).

The EPL - the best league on the planet?

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014

Four Referees And A Linesman - Guest Post by Bob Pomfret

A rare guest post with a, hopefully, tongue-in-cheek assessment of half a century of failures by the England football team.
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I blame Carlos Velasco Carballo. 

‘Who’s he?’ I hear you ask.

He’s a referee of course. He’s the referee that stopped England from winning the World Cup in Brazil this summer. You may think, having seen the England team fly home after three winless games, that this is stretching the imagination too far, but you’re wrong. In fact let me add some more names: José Roberto Wright, Jorge Larrionda, Ali Bin Nasser. There are others, but in my very humble opinion these are the four worst offenders.

It’s Tuesday 19th June, twenty eight minutes past eight here in Woodstock, not sure what time that is in the Corinthians stadium Sao Paulo but never mind. Daniel Sturridge is roaring down the wing when he gets elbowed off the ball by Uruguay captain Diego Godin. It’s a yellow card, anybody could see it’s a yellow card. REFEREE, It’s clearly a yellow card. Now, any other time I’m sure it would have been given, but twenty minutes earlier Godin had already been booked for handball, and Carlos Velasco Carballo, yes you Mr Carballo, bottled it. No second card, Godin stays on the pitch. Ten minutes later Suarez scores the first of two goals to send us on our way out of the cup, and home to unfair ridicule in the press.

‘So what if Godin had been sent off?'

 

Well, naturally England would have won. And the momentum would have carried us forward to glory. We would have beaten Costa Rica in the next game, topped the group, gone on to trounce Greece in the following round, and stormed past a fading Holland in the Quarter Finals. After coming out on top in a tough tight game with Argentina in the Semi’s, the nation would bask in the glorious sunshine of victory over arch rivals Germany in the final. In the bag, our fifth World Cup victory.

‘Fifth?’ I hear you say, ‘Surely Bob you’ve got that wrong, its 48 years of hurt since England last won the World Cup in 1966.’ 

Well yes, technically it is nearly half a century, and counting, since we won the cup but if it were not for Messrs Wright, Larrionda and Bin Nasser, and of course Mr Carballo, I feel pretty damned confident we would today be on the verge of winning our fifth World Cup. I have a fairly strong sense of injustice about a couple of others, and two or three European Championships too, but for now I’ll concentrate on making the case for five World Cup wins. 

I’ll start with the closest that we got. The one that hurts the most for me personally. It’s 1990. ‘Italia 90’, I loved it. Pavarotti singing ‘Nessum Dorma’ and John Barnes rapping on ‘World in Motion’. After a very slow start, England were playing great football. Platt’s last minute goal against Belgium was the best of the tournament. Lineker was on form, Gazza was at his peak. It was a brilliant World Cup. And suddenly we were through to the Semi-finals.

You remember it? Of course you do... the penalty shoot-out versus West Germany. Waddle whacks his penalty over the bar, hangs his head in despair, and the nation joins Gazza in floods of tears. Okay, fair enough. I don’t blame Chris Waddle (well I do a bit). Anybody can miss a penalty, especially the fifth penalty of five in a World Cup semi-final, but in the minutes leading up to that shoot out, the referee, José Roberto Wright (Yes you, Mr Wright), made two key decisions that went against us. 

I’ll start with the second one. Nine minutes from the end of extra time, Platt scored a goal which, had it been given would have put us 2-1 up. He was flagged offside and okay, maybe he was offside, but it was s-o-o-o close and it could easily have been given couldn’t it? I’d have given it. That was bad enough, but the real reason that Mr Wright cost us the 1990 World Cup came a few minutes earlier.

It was the ninth minute of extra time and Paul Gascoigne, who had collected a yellow card earlier in the tournament, and knew he would miss the final if he got another one, tackled Thomas Berthold. I’m not denying it was a foul, but, was it a bad foul? Was it worthy of the 428 rollovers that Berthold managed to perform, before lying dead at the edge of the pitch? Was it? No it bloody wasn’t. 

If anybody deserved a card, it should have been Berthold for behaving like an arse, Instead the ref waves the card into Gazza’s face, and that was that... I was very nearly sobbing myself.

‘And, the point is Bob?’ 

Well, the point is, that had the referee not been sold a very smelly salmon by Berthold, who by the way got up and was absolutely fine, Gazza would, I’m sure, have driven England forward into the final.

‘And when we got there?’ 

We would have brushed aside Argentina, who had lost half their first choice team to injury and suspension, and the cup would have been ours. 

‘And there are two more World Cups we should have won?’ I can hear the hint of scepticism in your voice. Well, yes there are. When I remind you, I’m sure you will remember them as clearly as me.

1986. The year of the ‘Hand of God’. I’m not going to dwell on this for too long but the plain straightforward simple truth is that Diego Maradona handled the ball to beat Peter Shilton. Referee Ali Bin Nasser managed to miss the incident, and instead of sending Maradona off, he let the goal stand. Maradona scored again later to secure a 2-1 win. Argentina went on to win the World Cup. As we were definitely better than them, it’s clear that, had Mr Magoo not been the referee, after only 20 years of minor discomfort, we would have won our second World Cup.

2010. The year of ‘the goal that wasn’t’. If I’m entirely honest, I’m not absolutely totally completely and utterly sure that we would have beaten Spain, had we met them later in the competition, but for the sake of my claim, let’s not dwell on that. What I am clear about, is that referee Jorge Larrionda did his very best to make sure that we would never find out how things would have gone had we taken on the Spanish.

I’ll take you back to June 27th 2010. The game is against Germany (again). Remember? The stadium is full, the vuvuzelas are driving everybody loopy, and England have started very badly. After conceding two early goals it looks like we might get over run, but first Matthew Upson gets a goal back, and then, just before half-time, Lampard beats the goalkeeper with a shot from thirty yards. The ball hits the bar, drops a full yard behind the line, and here in Woodstock we are bouncing round the living room. But, and it is a very big bastard of a but, somehow Mr Larrionda and his linesman appear not to notice that Frank has scored… at the same time as the big screens are showing the ball bounce behind the line, Larrionda is waving play on. 45 minutes later it’s all over, and it’ll be another four years before Carlos Velasco Carballo comes along and spoils yet another World Cup for us. 

So there you go. If history were not full of bloody awful referees, next Sunday we’d be celebrating England’s fifth World Cup win.

‘And the linesman?’ Ah, good. You haven’t forgotten that the title features five officials. It’s the marvelous Mister Tofiq Bahramov, of course.

‘Who is he?’ 

Who is Mr Tofiq Bahramov? He is the very best, the most competent, lineman ever to wave his flag in a World Cup final. Mr Tofiq Bahramov is the wonderful wonderful man who spotted that Geoff Hurst’s shot had so clearly gone over the line in the World Cup Final at Wembley in 1966. Mr Tofiq Bahramov is without doubt the greatest match official of all time. 

For the record, the other World Cups we might well have won, and who deserves the blame for failure: 

1970 – Alf Ramsey’s fault for taking Bobby Charlton off, at 2-0 up versus Germany. We lost 3-2.

1974 – Brian Clough’s fault. We fail to qualify after he calls Polish Goalkeeper, Jan Tomaszewski, a clown. No need to ask who was man of the match. 

1982 – Ron Greenwood this time, brings on Keegan and Brooking too late against Spain. We need to win, draw 0-0 and come home unbeaten. 

1994 – The FA take the blame, for giving Graham ‘Do I not like Orange’ Taylor the job of taking the team that should have won in 1990, and failing to qualify four years later. 

1998 – Complex one this one: Hoddle for not picking Gazza, Danny Baker and Chris Evans for getting photographed getting pissed with Gazza and giving Hoddle the excuse not to play him, and Eileen Drewery for trying to get God on our side. Maradona had already established whose side the almighty is on 12 years earlier. 

2002 – David Beckham’s second metatarsal on his left foot. 

2006 – Christiano Ronaldo’s fault for encouraging the referee to send off Rooney. And the resultant wink to camera was unforgivable… well I haven’t forgiven him, maybe you are a better person! 

Just in case you are wondering, I haven’t forgotten 1978, but we were just crap that year!

5 Fixed Matches From FIFA World Cup 2014

We gave you ten fixed matches involving English teams that were conspiratorially fixed and/or involved excessive insider trading (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/ten-fixed-matches.html).

We follow up with a similar listing of five FIFA World Cup 2014 matches from the Group Stage that were corrupted.

So while the mainstream media focuses on really ludicrous things like how Roy Hodgson deserves to keep his job and the ridiculous banning of Luis Suarez, the world's premier footballing tournament is being dismantled by mainstream criminals within the game.

The turnover on World Cup games reaches tens of billions on some matches...
... the benefits of corruption are evident.

Aspects of the England set up are particularly problematical.

Four of the matches below were English-based matchfixing events.
 
There is a mafia behind the England team (and English football) that does not have any interest in sporting success.
These people are making many millions out of their corruptions and are carcinogenic in their spread through the British game.

Furthermore, most of the media people who you trust to inform you about realities are either involved in the corruptions, have knowledge of them or accommodate such realities as simply being part of the modern game.

So why aren't Europol/Interpol checking out the following...?

Brazil v Croatia - fixed match/ insider betting/ suspect referee performance.

France v Honduras - bookmaker influenced matchfixing/ insider betting/ restricted volume pre-match.

Italy v England - fixed match/ insider betting/ agents involvement.

England v Uruguay - fixed match/ insider betting/ agents involvement.

Colombia v Ivory Coast - fixed match/ insider betting/ suspect referee performance.

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014

Did You Not Like That?

Roy Hodgson only became England manager by virtue of not being Harry Redknapp.

After England were all but eliminated by a country with a population a third the size of Greater London, Roy Hodgson is "adamant" that he will not resign in the wake of the country's worst ever World Cup performance.
But it is an outrage that Hodgson was ever appointed in the first place.
The man has only won one league title (the Danish) in a quarter of a century and, with England eliminated at the group stage for the first time since 1958, he should have the decency to step down post-tournament.

But with £3.5m per annum plus fringe benefits and perks, Roy is not going to resign!

There were 72 support staff for the England World Cup debacle...
... if you give 72 monkies a typewriter, they don't produce Macbeth.

But surely we could expect something more than Noddy?

We detail why this was a project doomed to failure.

Roy Hodgson 

"I don't think we let the country down" - Roy Hodgson.

Hodgson appears to have far too great an affinity with a few agents - Stellar and Base represent the goalkeeper and the entire defence (that would be the defence that has just been responsible for losing the first two tournament games for the first time in England's history).
Hodgson himself is represented by Base.
Meanwhile, remember the two outlier selections for Euro 2012 - Kelly and Butland - they too were both Stellar clients at the time.
Key Sports' players gain special privileges too.

Non-meritocratic selection from an already limited pool of players is not a strong strategy.

Furthermore, in a fair world, Fulham would have been relegated when Hodgson was manager there but were saved by a match of highly questionable integrity that resulted in Reading being demoted in their stead.

Without making any allegations of shenanigans, the very fact that Hart, Johnson, Jagielka (Stellar) and Baines, Cahill, Hodgson (Base) are effectively in control of the entire global betting market on England World Cup games (and these markets have been colossally liquid in Brasil) should be a cause for concern.
Everybody has a price.

Joe Hart 

In the two games to date, Joe Hart has been the weakest performer via ratings and the primary reason for the underachievement of the England team.

Versus Italy, there were six shots on target - two goals, two shots hit the woodwork with Hart nowhere to be seen, another shot was cleared off the line by Jagielka and Hart dangerously fumbled the only other effort.

Versus Uruguay, 2 shots, 2 goals.
There was no spring in his step in attempting to save the first goal and he appeared the antithesis of Peter Schmeichel as he made himself as small a target as possible for the second goal.

Perhaps if the man focused on football rather than on the financial lubrications of Head & Shoulders, Gillette and Doritos, a more professional performance might be achieved.

Incidentally, and once again not intending any suggestions of anything, the turnover on these England World Cup matches has been in the billions.
At some point, a manager/agent/defence triumvirate (or an agent/goalkeeper one) is going to exploit that opportunity for excessively astronomical levels of profit.

Dr Steve Peters 

The appointment of a psychologist to help the team prepare for the World Cup was a good idea...
... thinking that Dr Peters was the right man to do that job was myopic.

He was chosen for his work at Liverpool.
But Liverpool won nothing last season despite the benefit of no Champions League matches and a bizarre tilt in refereeing decisions.

The key disastrous strategy took place in the game last night.

England players (including his Liverpool colleagues) were instructed to ignore Luis Suarez in the tunnel prior to the game in the mistaken belief that this would undermine the Uruguayan's sense of self.

There could not have been a more self-harming strategy.
You don't wind up a highly talented street-fighter who knows your weaknesses.
Suarez was energised by the collective slur.
England gave the South Americans a goal start!

After Peters monitored Suarez from close quarters throughout a season, how could he fail to diagnose the Uruguayan's psychological state?

Of course, in a corrupted future, such psychologist input could be a benefit to the short-selling of one's nation for proprietary profit. But only in a corrupted future...

Strategic Own Goals 

The list of strategic errors is endless...

Dyke offering the cutthroat gesture at the World Cup draw.
Hodgson dissing the good people of Manaus turning the game into an away match.
Dyke saying Blatter should resign on the eve of the tournament and Triesmann joining in for good measure.
Dyke refusing to offer Hodgson job security pre-tournament.
Not man-marking Pirlo.
Winding up Suarez and then marking him with a player who is repeatedly devastated by the Uruguayan in Merseyside derbies.
Not playing for a draw after equalising against Uruguay.
Hodgson hadn't even done the sums on qualification thinking that England were out of the cup after last night's defeat when, in fact, they could be backed to qualify at around 17/2.
Australia have somehow managed to cover 26km more than England in their two matches. Why wasn't more fitness work undertaken.

Did nobody want England to succeed? Why would that be?

The Gravy Train 

Alongside the underperformance of the team and their management and accomplices, English football has sent over a whole squad of undesirables to leech off the game that they are happily destroying.

The potential choice of punditry is extensive.
So how have BBC and ITV ended up with two representatives of leading bookies, a former Ladbrokes ambassador, a player who defended his brother when the latter was convicted of matchfixing charges, a player charged with illegal betting in the Premier League earlier this season, a manager who utilises PESs, two individuals with knowledge of matchfixing in England and Alan Shearer?

The disinformation from the bookies' representatives has been extensive to the detriment of the viewer who has no idea of the corruptions at play. Viewers have been repeatedly fed incorrect inputs that result in financial loss if acted upon.

There is a charming circularity here in that the footballer (Danny Murphy) who scored the goal that kept Fulham in the Premier League in the corrupted match which sent Reading down is now on the BBC team misinforming us about the World Cup!

These people are hijacking English football for proprietary and non-meritocratic benefit...
... or perhaps something still worse.

In the words of Stuart Pearce: “Other countries must look at us and laugh at times, they really must.”

Sack the lot of them!

Football is Fixed!

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed  

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014

How Ed Woodward Cost Manchester United £30 Million

Précis

Being a football man or, for that matter, a businessman is no longer enough for a team to reach its full potential due to the levels of corruption in the game.
Top teams need to instigate corrupt practices to exploit their power and to compete with other top sides who are employing similar tactics while lesser teams need to undertake defensive strategies to offset the corruptions perpetrated against their interests.
The strategic knowledge, the ability to create complex scenario analyses, the necessary contacts and market analytical skills (to assess the insider trading that is always linked to corruption) are required to optimise the performance of any serious football club in the postmodern game.

The Background 

Manchester United were available at 100/1 to qualify for the Champions League prior to their match at Everton on April 20th 2014...
... and yet if Ed Woodward and David Moyes had possessed an ounce of strategic planning between them, the club would have been guaranteed fourth place.

Richard Scudamore had announced that it was bad for the Premier League brand for Man Utd to be failing.
UEFA wanted United in the Champions League as there is a necessity for the second biggest global brand to be in the competition.
No other G14 top tier team had ever failed to qualify for the Champions League.
The Glazers understood that their leveraged buyout would be financially insecure with loss of income, deterioration in player value and inability to attract suitable players in future.
It was also understood within the club that they could not fall any further behind Manchester City.
Additionally, British and offshore bookmakers desired United qualification for turnover/profit reasons.
The systemic structure existed.

The Sting 

Manchester United needed to win all five remaining fixtures in their easy run-in while Arsenal achieved no more than 5 points from their final four games and Everton no more than six.
All three sides had to play Hull City (managed by former Red, Steve Bruce).
David Moyes was even sat next to Bruce in the Directors' area for the Aston Villa v Southampton match on April 19th.

If this were Spain, discussions would have taken place regarding maletins being exchanged to ensure suitable performances from Hull City.

With Hull on board, the strategy would have began in earnest.

If the Premier League want for something to occur with their brand, they can facilitate such realities through their control of the 18 PGMOL referees - a combination of Marriner, Atkinson, Webb, Taylor, Clattenburg and Moss as refs/4th officials would have done the trick (Moss and Clattenburg had already been selected for Hull v Arsenal and Everton v Man Utd while Marriner had overseen Everton's defeat by Palace earlier in the week).
As all referee appointments are made via just one individual, Keren Barratt, this offers a closed matrix of manipulation which is very easy to activate.

With Hull and the referees on board, the odds are no longer 100/1!

Approaches would then have been made to two leading firms of agents ####### and ######### who are both willing to 'persuade' their clients to underperform accordingly when requested.
These two firms would have delivered very key individuals in both the Arsenal and Everton teams to allow the maletins to be opened.
Once the corruption was in motion, the frail psychologies of failure relating to both Arsenal and Everton would have been engendered.

With Hull, the match officials, control of two key players in competitor sides and negative psychologies on board, United would have been certain of qualification and the £20 million that would have gone with it.

Instead, Woodward lost both this money and the £10 million it took to pay off David Moyes.

The amount that the corruption would have cost would have been a fraction of these totals and, obviously, significant inroads could have been made into the costs by trading on the fraudulent events in the Dark Pool and Asian Underground Betting Markets.

If you think that this scenario sounds incredible, I can assure you that similar corruptions occur every single season in the Champions League, Serie A and La Liga.

Football is Fixed!

For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed  

© Football is Fixed 2006-2014

John Colquhoun And Jonathan Moss - A Marriage Made In Sunderland

               John "Napoleon Complex" Colquhoun With His Shiny Face and His Threats and Menaces

John Colquhoun is a football agent (Key Sports Management) and a professional gambler.

Jonathan Moss is a Premier League referee who struggles to keep up with the game.

They first became acquainted while both were players at Sunderland over twenty years ago...
... and their romance has truly blossomed in the intervening years.

Below we detail some issues regarding this relationship within the wider sphere of systemic corruption in the Premier League.

Incidentally, Mr Moss also surfaces as a headmaster at Beech Hill primary school in Halifax...
... so, if you live in the Calderdale area and you wish for your young children to learn about the ways of the world, this is your educational establishment. 

                                                              Fit For Purpose?

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Due to the nature of this post, only the introduction is being made publicly available with the remainder of the article only being accessible to our trading team and primary brokers.

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1. Match Fixing in The Premier League

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2. Historical Match Fixing in the Championship/ The Elevation of West Bromwich Albion

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3. Eight Fixed Premier League Games in Season 2013/14

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5. Threats, Menaces, Aliases, Coercion, Mafia

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For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed  
© Football is Fixed 2006-2014

Crying Child, English Football (Insider Trading And Match Fixing?)

                                   The Magic Of The Cup Or The Tragic Of The Muck?                                         

Insider Trading And Match Fixing?

Nottingham Forest opened at 3.20 (11/5) in places for their FA Cup tie versus West Ham United.

By kick off, Nottingham Forest were 1.35 (4/11) at 10Bet.

West Ham drifted from Evens to 9/2.

Turnover was of a level normally seen in Big Six Premier League clashes.

IN OUR DATABASE OF OVER 80,000 GAMES COVERING TWO DECADES OF GLOBAL FOOTBALL WE HAVE NEVER WITNESSED SUCH PRICE DYNAMICS (WITH VOLUME) AS EXISTED ON THIS MATCH.

But...

Over 50% of the pre-match volume was traded before the West Ham team was made public...
... that was the team with 9 changes and three debutants and a 3 man defence where two players were making their first appearances of the season and the other was a midfielder who had been out for a month. A couple of substitutes were also debutants.

Oh, and a change of goalkeeper.

After losing 5-0, the West Ham hierarchy are offering a VIP package to the child filmed crying during this allegedly competitive game.

Looking at the betting patterns, that is the very least that the club should be doing.

If any one person involved in the match underperformed due to knowledge of the global gamble then we are dealing with match fixing.

Insider trading or...
... match fixing AND insider trading? 
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When even youngsters know that they are being ripped off, the insider bettors really do not see reality in the same way as the rest of us.

Meanwhile in a parallel universe, Gordon Strachan, the Ladbrokes ambassador (for feck's sake?!), informed us on the ITV FA Cup highlights show: "The fans know nothing."

Which may be the case but at least they know enough to understand that they have just witnessed the biggest insider gamble for two decades and on a terrestrial televised match just two months into The English Match Fixing Scandal...

... even more audacious if it turns out to be match fixing!

IT IS ENTIRELY VALID TO REST PLAYERS...
... IT ISN'T VALID WHEN KNOWLEDGE OF THIS SELECTION SURFACES VIA SOME PEOPLE IN-THE-KNOW AS A COLOSSAL CO-ORDINATED INSIDER GAMBLE ACROSS THE PLANET.

THE INFORMATION SHOULD HAVE BEEN MADE PUBLIC EARLIER SO THAT ITV DIDN'T PAY TO BROADCAST WEST HAM 3RD TEAM AND FANS DIDNT WASTE THEIR MONEY.

FANS PAY THEIR AUSTERITY-BITTEN EARNINGS TO WATCH FOOTBALL - NOT A BETTING SCANDAL UNFOLDING.

THIS INSIDER GAMBLE MASSIVELY DISTORTED AND CORRUPTED THE MARKETS FOR PRIVATE PROFIT.

AND IF THAT ISN'T ILLICIT INSIDER TRADING THEN WHAT THE FECK IS?  

BUT THE LIQUIDITY SUGGESTS THAT SOME PEOPLE WERE IN NO DOUBT AS TO THE OUTCOME AND THAT MAKES THIS EVENT SOMETHING FAR MORE SIGNIFICANT.

And even if this is solely an example of sociopathic insider trading...
... in financial markets in Britain, insider trading used to be regarded as a perk of the job before regulation was introduced. 
Now people are occasionally jailed for such psychopathy.

Why is insider trading on football seen differently?
Or have we become so inured to the corruption in the game that fans also see insider betting as merely being a perk of the job?

When bookies see such insider volume, the markets should be suspended as they are corrupted. All bets should be cancelled. End of...
Instead, the bookmakers trade it elsewhere for private profit. 

And that makes little boys cry! 

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Meanwhile the authorities focus their concerted attentions on accusing some Black men of getting booked deliberately...

DJ Campbell Is Innocent...
... Relatively.
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This blog post is no accusation against any individual or grouping of individuals.
But some insiders, those in-the-know, people in the loop, exploited inside knowledge to profit from a compromised market.
Our primary point is that this opportunity should not exist.
It is a loophole.

Bookies pass the knowledge around the world in a pyramid scheme of insider exploitation of the market until some offshore layer is left holding the liquidity parcel when the music stops.

This isn't a legitimate market.
It is a poker play.

But you cannot blame people for exploiting opportunities that come their way...
... it is the infrastructure of the game architected by the authorities that allow this casino to exist.

Until global betting markets are regulated, globally, and there is a compulsion for club officials to make public new knowledge that impacts upon the markets, these farces will recur recurrently.

Football markets are highly liquid global markets and should be treated as such.

If the information had been made public then ITV wouldn't have covered the game, bookmakers would have priced the market correctly, advertisers wouldn't be peeved about viewing figures, the FA Cup brand wouldn't have been tainted and, most importantly of all, West Ham fans wouldn't have wasted their money on a 3rd team game away from home with defeat a certainty.

After all, a debutant, a seasonal debutant and a midfielder who has not played in a month in a three man defence in front of a new goalie still perfecting his English is a given if you are in receipt of the knowledge!

http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/how-to-solve-match-fixing-once-and-for.html 


For many more itemised angles on corruption follow us on Twitter @FootballIsFixed  
© Football is Fixed 2006-2014

Football Is Fecked

It is worthy of remembrance that Football Is Fixed was launched on November 11th 2006.

We have been exposing corruption in world football, with particular focus on the Premier League, for over seven years.
We have published over 1250 posts in that time (the vast majority now archived).

The first post 'Manipulated Markets' is reproduced in part below...
... we wouldn't alter one single word.

"English Football is currently reeling from the impacts of the Stevens inquiry into the bung culture, the standard and ethics of referees and the revelation that Victor Chandler International allegedly took bets from some Premiership Managers and Players. The words “tip” and “iceberg” spring to mind.
I have traded professionally on global football betting markets for the past 15 years. In my experience, all the brokers, market makers and bookmakers that I have traded with take bets from insiders in the game. It is regarded as buying information. Undoubtedly, some of this exchange of information borders on the corrupt. The recent betting scandal in Germany and the uproar in Italy’s Serie A show that this isn’t merely a British problem.
Asian Market Makers regularly accept bets of greater than £1million without blinking (Gianluigi Buffon – the Juventus goalkeeper – was found with betting slips for several million euros in his possession during the Moggiopoli scandal). Inevitably, the liquidity of the Asian markets persuades some football people to enhance their earning capacities. To my knowledge, such individuals include players, managers, referees, bookmakers, agents and the criminal fringe. It isn’t just the Italian mafia centres of Napoli, Palermo and Reggio di Calabria that are actively involved in football markets!
To date, all attempts to clean up the game have been peripheral. In Germany, some selective sweeping under the carpet and wrist slapping went on in response to the referee Robert Hoyzer admitting that he took money to alter football match outcomes. But, I believe that there are other match officials in the Bundesliga who were merely demoted or, indeed, allowed to continue to officiate. In Italy, in the aftermath of calciocaos, two referees were suspended but the other six who were under investigation are still involved in Serie A.
Although there are many corrupt players, it is the match officials who are the key component of this crisis. Some have links to individual clubs, some to bookmakers and some to the underworld. There are also many honest people in the game who are just trying to do their jobs. However, until football cleans up its act, corruption will persist. Falling attendances in Italy and England are partially related to deficiencies in the sport on offer. Although the prawn sandwich brigade remain oblivious to anything, the true fans know when they are being short changed. The recent assertion by Graeme Souness that British football is “the most honest in Europe” is simply laughable."
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We selected the name 'Football Is Fixed' in an act of strategic duality whereby the fact that football was/is fixed could be offset by it eventually being mended - so football would indeed become fixed!
Foolish hope.

We outlined in a recent post six areas that have to be addressed if football is to elevate itself above a version of horseracing with a ball and goalposts (http://footballisfixed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/how-to-solve-match-fixing-once-and-for.html).
The probability of even one area being addressed with integrity is remote!

But, even if we were to live in a world where betting markets could be regulated to prevent match fixing, the rules to be put in place would be Swiss-cheesed with loopholes to enable the same corruptions to happen again.
Over time, these loopholes would expand into newly available structures to enable future match fixing...
... just like capitalism after the Depression.

So, further attempts to rescue the game are now seen as futile.

To commemorate this momentous state of affairs, we are renaming our Twitter feed FIXBALL IS FECKED.

In the future, blog posts will become less frequent but still hard hitting.
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Our time ahead is to be taken up with the FIFAss - a closed-ended hedge fund which is being launched later this month and is already fully subscribed, a mobile phone App offering betting advices, information and support to be released in time for the World Cup, plus club consultancies outside of Britain as the English game is, in the words of Sir Bob Russell MP, "rotten to the core"...
... listen up - not one bad apple but rotten to the core!

In example, our primary Asian broker has provided us with details of the 17 largest bets placed on Premier League games this season...
... 16 have won, one referee has been involved in 8 of the games and another in 6!

WE COULD, IF WE SO WISHED, ENTIRELY DEMOLISH ENGLISH FOOTBALL - WE HAVE BETTING PATTERNS, RECORDED MEETINGS AND PHONE CONVERSATIONS, TESTIMONIES, POLICE RECORDS OF THREATS RECEIVED, FULSOME DETAILS OF SPECIFIC INSIDER TRADING AND MATCH RIGGING AND STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT PATTERNS THAT REVEAL THE CORRUPTIONS UNDERPINNING ENGLISH FOOTBALL AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS.
THE DATA, INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE LODGED WITH OUR LAWYERS ARE DAMNING.

IF WE THOUGHT THAT IT WOULD MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE TO THE FUTURE INTEGRITY OF THE ENGLISH GAME, WE WOULD PUBLISH THIS INFORMATION.

BUT IT WOULDN'T.

WHAT IS THE POINT IN FULLY DISCLOSING AND ITEMISING THE MATCH FIXING BY OWNERS, AGENTS, REFEREES AND PLAYERS WHEN THE ORCHESTRATORS OF THE INFRASTRUCTURES THAT ALLOW MATCH FIXING ARE IN THE CORRIDORS OF POWER AT FIFA, UEFA, INTERPOL, THE PREMIER LEAGUE, THE FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION, THE FOOTBALL LEAGUE AND A WHOLE ARRAY OF GLOBAL BOOKMAKERS?

INSTEAD THE FULL PROOF REMAINS AS OUR COLLECTIVE SECURITY.

© Football is Fixed 2006-2013