Recently, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Goiás carried out an operation related to the alleged manipulation of results in Serie B matches of the Brazilian Championship last year. Called Maximum Penalty, the inquiry has already pointed out that a group of criminals acted in at least three clashes in the second division.
The suspect is that the group would have contacted players to commit penalties or fouls, acting in accordance with bets made by criminals. If the group’s requests were met, the athletes would keep part of the winnings: around 150,000 reais for each correct bet. The amount moved could reach up to R$ 600 thousand.
According to lawyer Filipe Senna – a partner at Jantalia Advogados and specialist in Gaming Law -, “suspicions of match-fixing bring important reflections on the sports betting market in Brazil. The first of these reflections concerns the cause of these manipulations: who commits them? Sports bookmakers are commonly accused of manipulating results, but this is not true,” he told Jornal Jurid.
“Manipulations are mainly committed by third parties who are not directly linked to these houses – nor to the sporting event itself, the athletes, the managers or other people connected to the event –, to change results and thus earn profits in sports betting predetermined”, he added.
The expert also clarified that “the second point refers to the need for regulation of the sports betting sector in Brazil”.
“With this regulation, situations of manipulation would tend to become less recurrent – and thus there would also be an important protection both for bookmakers, who are victims of these manipulations and suffer losses for this, and for the consumer himself, the common bettor , which is also harmed in situations in which the result is conducted by a third party external to the event, based on interference”, he concluded.
Match manipulation case is investigated in Série B do Brasileiro
The case is being investigated by the Public Ministry of Goiás (MPGO) in an operation launched on the 14th, by the Special Action Group to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco), by the Institutional Security and Intelligence Coordination (CSI) and by the Special Action Group in Major Football Events (GFUT).
The MPGO prosecutor, Fernando Martins Cesconetto, declared that a businessman, through his company, contacted athletes so that they could carry out actions in the clashes in order to reach the bet made by the group on online platforms.
In the case being investigated, the combined bet would be a penalty kick in the first stage of the matches between Vila Nova x Sport, Criciúma x Tombense and Sampaio Corrêa x Londrina, all for the 38th round of Série B of the Brasileirão. According to the prosecutor, the case reached the Public Prosecutor’s Office following a complaint made by Vila Nova.