29 Turkish football games manipulated, German officials say

Twenty-nine games in Turkish leagues are suspected to have been manipulated by a match-fixing ring, German prosecutors said Friday.

A total of 200 football matches in nine countries, including at least three Champions League games, are implicated in the scandal, Agence France-Presse reported. The alleged criminals netted several million euros in profits by betting on manipulated matches in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Austria, prosecutors said at a press conference in Bochum.

The suspect matches include 12 games from the Europa League, formerly known as the UEFA Cup, one qualifying game for the U21 European Championship and four from the German second division.

The names of the clubs and players involved in the manipulated matches will not be revealed until the investigation is concluded, the German prosecutors said.

Governing body ‘shocked’

UEFA spokesperson Peter Limacher said he was pleased with the efficiency of the international investigation, but was nonetheless dismayed at the revelations.

“We at UEFA are deeply shocked by the extent of the orchestrated manipulation carried out by international gangs,” he was quoted as saying by Deutsche Welle.

Police across Europe carried out raids and arrests Thursday, with German prosecutors suspecting that players, coaches, referees and officials from high-ranking European football had been offered bribes to throw games.

According to press reports, 15 people were arrested in at least six European countries, with around 100 suspects in total. Matches in Turkey were the main focus of investigation.

The daily Berliner Morgenpost cited one unnamed top investigator as saying the probe could result in “one of the biggest scandals in the history of professional football.”

“This earthquake will shake the credibility of the sport for a long time,” the paper quoted the investigator as saying.

Harald Stenger, a spokesman for the German Football Federation, or DFB, said: “As far as the DFB knows, no German matches are affected.”

But the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that one of the games being scrutinized was a friendly between German side SSV Ulm and Fenerbahçe Istanbul in July.

The Turkish side won 5-0, and investigators suspect that “certain currently unidentified SSV Ulm players” received more than 10,000 euros ($14,900) to throw the game, the paper said.

Reports also said that the ring was believed to have placed enormous bets with Asian bookmakers, where limits on the sums that punters can gamble can be several times higher than in Europe.

According to information from AFP subsidiary SID, matches in at least nine European leagues were being investigated for signs that they had been manipulated.

Those arrested Thursday included two Croatian brothers living in Berlin, Ante and Milan Sapina, who were at the center of a match-fixing scandal that rocked Germany in 2004, newspapers said.

That case saw referee Robert Hoyzer sentenced to two years and five months in prison after admitting being paid 70,000 euros ($104,000) by a Croatian mafia ring to throw games.

The matches concerned were mainly in the German second and third division, but a German Cup match between first division SV Hamburg and third division Paderborn and a first-division match in Turkey were also affected.

Hoyzer was released after serving half of his sentence.