Soccer player Marcos Vinícius Alves Barreira, better known as Romário, said this Tuesday, the 20th, that players from teams like Cruzeiro, Santos, Atlético Mineiro and Avaí would be involved in the game manipulation scheme in Brazilian football.
The information was cited at a hearing by the CPI on Sports Betting in the Chamber of Deputies. He was banned from football by the Superior Court of Sports Justice (STJD) for being cited by the Public Ministry of Goiás (MPGO) in Operation Penalty Maximum, which investigates fraud.
Romário declared that he did not earn money from criminals to influence the outcome of games. However, he passed on the contact of another player from Vila Nova (his former team), Gabriel Domingues, with one of the recruiters.
“They made the proposal to me, and I turned it down. My mistake was to pass Gabriel Domingues’ number on to them”, he said. “Not from Goiás, no. But in other states, yes. [Of] players they did not mention names, but they spoke of clubs. Cruzeiro, Avai, Santos and, at the time, Atlético Mineiro. They even talked and sent me a video of the guys doing it for them,” he added.
Threats
According to the athlete, Gabriel Domingues was unable to perform regularly because he was not included in the starting lineup in the game in question. Later, one of the members of the gang would have threatened Romário himself.
“He came to charge me the BRL 500,000 bet. I said I wouldn’t be able to pay for something I didn’t do, and then his threats began. There are prints, videos of him threatening, threatening my family”, he pointed out.
He declared that he told the situation to the president of Vila Nova, Hugo Jorge Bravo, but he would not have been advised to report the case. “I got to talk to Hugo. At the time, no [guided to file a complaint]. A week later, he terminated my contract,” he detailed.
Check out the full testimony of the player at the CPI
Sports Betting CPI
The Sports Betting CPI is chaired by Júlio Arcoverde (PP-PI) and rapporteur by Felipe Carreras (PSB-PE). The discussion on the subject intensified after the MPGO denounced 16 people for fraud in the results of 13 soccer matches.
The cases involved matches from Series A and B of the Brazilian Championship, in 2022, and from the Paulista and Gaúcho championships in 2023. Some players have already been tried and convicted by the STJD (Superior Court of Sports Justice) with banning, suspension and fines.
