The fight against match fixing in European football has suffered a further blow with the resignation of Uefa’s anti-corruption supremo only a year after he was appointed. Pierre Cornu will leave his post after the Euro 2012 tournament finishes. His departure follows the resignation earlier this year of the head of security for Fifa.
The fight against match fixing in European football has suffered a further blow with the resignation of Uefa’s anti-corruption supremo only a year after he was appointed. Pierre Cornu will leave his post after the Euro 2012 tournament finishes. His departure follows the resignation earlier this year of the head of security for Fifa.
Mr Cornu is said to be leaving to be spend more time with his family. Uefa has denied that his departure was in any way linked to the decision to ban FC Sion from European competition for fielding ineligible players, a ruling challenged in the courts by the Swiss team.
Mr Cornu set up a network of anti-corruption officers across Europe’s football associations to monitor the increasing incidence of match fixing. 24 police investigations are ongoing in Europe. A survey by players’ union FifPro found 12 per cent had been approached to fix matches.
Uefa also has a betting fraud system to monitor any irregular betting patterns across its 1,800 matches and 28,000 domestic fixtures in Europe. It spends €5m a year to counter match fixing.
In the case of the latest match fixing scandal in Italy, one former sports minister attributed the arrests involving Serie A clubs to the reluctance of the country’s football authorities to impose strong enough sanctions. Turkey’s football federation has been criticised for taking no action of its own against clubs in a match fixing scandal that has named 90 suspects.