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German football has been rocked by the match fixing scandal involving referee Robert Hoyzer. Ante Sapina, who is accused of leading a criminal betting gang that influenced or sought to influence, 23 matches, said he steadily got to know Hoyzer from early 2004 to May of that year when the two hatched a plot to rig a match. Referees Hoyzer and Dominik Marks and the former first division player Steffen Karl are charged with organised fraud for seeking to rig a series of matches from April to December 2004 on instructions from Sapina, aided by his brothers Milan and Filip. Operating out of a bar in Berlin, are alleged to have made over €2m out of bets on rigged games. Hoyzer was in charge of the regional league match between Paderborn and Chemnitz on 22 May 2004, the first of nine matches he is said to have fixed or tried to influence for Sapina's benefit in return for €67,000 and a flat-screen television.
Ante Sapina admitted on the first day of the trial that the charges against him were essentially true. He subsequently described how he had come to know lower league players, including Karl, who were prepared to under-perform, give away penalties and even get sent off to allow their opponents to win in return for a fee from Sapina.
However, fixing games is by no means easy. With Hoyzer, Sapina said, the match fixing attempts had produced mixed results after five games. Sapina had considered giving up, but Hoyzer had suggested they focus on his next game in charge, a first round tie in the German Cup. Hoyzer in fact helped Paderborn to come from two goals down to record a 4-2 victory over first division Hamburg SV by awarding the regional league side two dubious penalties and sending off the Hamburg striker Emile Mpenza. Lawyers for the prosecution said that Sapina had made over €750,000 from the game, while Hoyzer's reward was €20,000.
The scandal has embarrassed Germany as the nation prepares to host the 2006 World Cup. It is the worst case of match-fixing in the country for thirty years. The trial is expected to last for at least a month and may even still be in progress when the gala draw for the World Cup finals takes place in Leipzig on 9 December.
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