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Olympics News Desk
The London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Locog) will hold a meeting on Tuesday with UK bookmakers to fight against illegal gambling corruption during the event. This will be the first formal meeting of the officials with the gambling industry, which will focus on possible betting scandals and how officials will tackle suspect betting patterns. Athletes taking part in the event and team officials, coaches and referees are not allowed to bet under a code of ethics running for a month from the opening of the Olympic Village on July 16. The International Olympic Committee’s head of ethics, Paquerette Girard Zappelli; the head lawyer on betting and doping at Locog, Kendrah Potts and the head of regulation at the Gambling Commission, Nick Tofiluk, will hold a meeting tomorrow with betting industry representatives in Westminster. The aim is to fight against illegal betting. Sports Minister Hugh Robertson was invited but he will not attend the event, according to an article published by The Guardian. Instead, Andrew Scattergood, a civil servant at the Department for Culture Media and Sport will join the meeting.
Susannah Gill, public affair manager at Betfair, stated: “The idea is to make sure that we all know who we are, the system of contact during the Olympics and what will happen if there are any issues. Ninety percent of the ground work is already there”.
An education zone will where the athletes will get advice on gambling regulations will be established. “It will be a kind of education zone, a place where they can go and get information”, she said.
Ms. Gill highlighted the importance of the problem, which came to the fore last year when three Pakistani cricketers were jailed after being accused of accepting blackmail to fix parts of a match against England in London in 2010.
“I think with doping, sports have got their heads around that and are dealing with the issue. I think betting is something which has cropped up which they hadn’t given as much thought to, particularly the world of online gambling which is fair enough as the industry is only a decade old”, Gill said.
The Conservative peer and chairman of the British Olympic Association, Lord Moynihan, also showed his concern last month during a House of Lords debate, saying that the illegal betting represents a serious damage for the legacy of the Olympics. The IOC president, Jacques Rogge, pointed out in the same direction last year when described the problem of the betting corruption as a big threat for the credibility of sport.
“It is a world problem and it is a very pernicious problem. With the introduction of broadband, you can bet worldwide. The danger is that from illegal betting comes match-fixing and you see more attempts to manipulate matches”, he commented.
However, the betting industry affirms that the possible illegal betting during the Games has been overstated as the event will attract less attention from punters than football’s European Championships, according to them. “The reality is that the Olympics are a very small event in betting terms”, an industry insider told The Guardian.
Last month an article published by The Guardian informed that international ad British athletes involved in illegal betting would still be allowed to compete as they would have not committed the offence until they have carry it out. “A pile of money on a particular outcome is not an offence because an offence has not been committed until the event has happened”, Mr. Robertson, said.
Prosecution of those athlete involved in illegal betting scandals would carry out after the event.
Reporting by Paula Planelles Manzanaro
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