The thesis of Lord, who has worked at FIFA and Interpol investigating sports fraud, is quite simple: without receiving wages, seeing his life condition deteriorate with the long period of football stoppage, players who work in clubs in the lower divisions - and even athletes from other sports - become an easier target for criminals acting in the sport's underworld. Makes sense.
Bookmakers move millions around the planet. In the last decade, they invaded the digital world, globalizing their performance. Clubs the size of Real Madrid and Milan, just to name two of the biggest, have had brands from betting sites displayed as a sponsor on their jerseys. Even events promoted by FIFA followed the same path.
There were those who took a conservative, purist position, condemning all of this and defending the ban on football betting. And any advertising of this sector in the sport, as happened with the cigarette, from the end of the 90s. It is a myopic view of the business. The problem is not in the bets. Betting is a habit almost as old as humanity.
On the site Aposta 10, specialized in the subject, columnist Lucas Portela writes: "It is funny to think, but at the beginning of the primitive era, people used arrows, stones, spears, sticks and any other type of weapon to participate in the games. With arrows, probably won the one that hit a certain target. Historical records suggest that whoever throws his stone farther would win the bet. At that time, they would bet food, animals, houses and their own weapons."
The problem is different, and it is not far away from what happens in so many other activities: the inefficiency or lack of political will of the regulatory bodies and of the sports confederations themselves in repressing the organized mafia that operates around football and other sports throughout the world. And, if the manipulation of results already happens in times of normality, imagine in a pandemic scenario.
In the interview with GE.com, Lord says that, even with football suspended, the frauds continued; a phantom championship was invented by criminals in Ukraine, bringing together amateur teams, in games that never occurred but moved more than R$ 700 thousand (US$120k) in betting. If it were not detected in time, these values would be much higher.
It’s not the gambling bank’s fault if a guy like Mauricio Pelegrini, a São José leader and banned from football by the Rio de Janeiro federation’s TJD, involved in the manipulation of Rio’s third division results, gets caught working normally and sieving with young athletes, even after he was convicted. These are stories like this - and more than that, the certainty of impunity - that feed the gambling mafia in Brazil and other parts of the world, where in a universe far removed from the millionaire glamor of elites, small clubs, championships with little audience and players who live on a meager salary are a perfect scenario for fraud.
Prohibiting houses or gambling sites would be the same thing as taking the sofa out of the living room for the daughter not to date - that old saying. It is a mistake to think that these betting houses - at least those that are regularized - profit from fraud. As much as good faith bettors, who believe in the veracity of results, they lose out on the high prizes they often have to pay, and which are the result of mafia manipulation. It would be important, although this is not their obligation, to take a firm stance on cracking down on gambling criminals.
Acting alongside the State, sports organizations, or playing the role of those who should act and do not act.
Luiz Fernando Gomes
Sports columnist at Grupo LANCE! and PressOn Director
