The fixing conundrum: from an award-winning documentary to Paqueta in peril
Match-fixing and spot-fixing in football remain widespread in many places, and prevalent at lower levels almost everywhere. But proving it is hard for the authorities.
One of the winners at the SJA British Sports Journalism Awards on Monday was an audio documentary, “Confessions of a Match Fixer”, adjudged to be the single best piece of journalism in the audio sports documentary category in 2024.
It was an eight-part BBC podcast series, hosted by former Watford striker Troy Deeney and told the story of a former footballer, Moses Swaibu (below), a Crystal Palace academy product, and his version of how he transitioned from being a promising player to a key cog in an Asian match-fixing syndicate.
Match-fixing and spot-fixing are common in football around the world, including in the UK, especially at lower levels of the game. The most high-profile current case in England is the ongoing “trial” of West Ham midfielder Lucas Paquetá, accused of deliberately getting booked on multiple occasions. We’ll get into new details of that case in this piece.
I wrote about Swaibu’s “Confessions” series in August last year, detailing how that syndicate corrupted lower-league and non-league football in England from 2011 until 2013 or later, and how I investigated related corruption - including a huge fixing scandal in Australia - extensively in the years it was happening.
Swaibu was later found guilty in court, in 2015, of conspiracy to commit bribery and he was jailed for 16 months, one of five people sent to prison for corruption. The others convicted included former Premier League player Delroy Facey, former non-League defender Michael Boateng, and two businessmen linked to a major Asian fixing syndicate, Chann Sankaran from Singapore and Sri Lankan-born Krishna Ganeshan.
It should be stressed that the convictions came about largely because of a Daily Telegraph investigation and a “sting” on the corrupt parties rather detailed evidence of specific fixes.
According to Swaibu’s award-winning pod series, the plot involved dozens of footballers across 12 clubs from the Conference South in 2012-13 alone, with Swaibu an influential figure in recruiting them and directing them.
If we assume that Swaibu’s recollections in the pod are even vaguely true and / or accurate, with perhaps five or six players at each of a dozen clubs implicated in a fraud that other sources said involved 150 fixed matches in that division in that season alone, then who has ever been held to account among those 60 match-fixing footballers? The answer: nobody but Swaibu, Facey and Boateng.
Rationally, one has to arrive at one of two conclusions: that football’s authorities (particularly the English FA) either didn’t have the will or ability to deal with corruption, or else this alleged corruption didn’t happen or has been massively exaggerated.
So which is it?
I contacted the FA this week in preparing this piece, which delves into numerous historic fixing cases, and the FA’s difficulties in trying to prosecute them.
Addressing the “crimes” supposedly revealed on Swaibu’s podcast, an informed source told me that the FA think “not everything in the podcast is correct, in our view.” There was no elaboration beyond that.
I might be completely wrong in my assessment of that statement but I took it to mean that the FA don’t believe that up to 60 match-fixers were known about and left to get on with their nefarious activities.
And on the Paquetá “trial”, which is ongoing behind closed doors, I was told (and this is standard practice and understandable) that the FA could say nothing, on or off the record, in a sensitive case such as this.
I also wrote about the Paquetá case last year on this site, although we now know a huge amount more about what supposedly happened, and who was involved, and who benefitted, and to what extent.
Today’s article will get back into the weeds of the Paquetá case and share with you:
Revelatory findings from a Brazilian government probe into match-fixing and spot-fixing in Brazil that implicates Paquetá’s uncle and one of Paquetá’s close friends, who was also booked after bets were placed on that outcome.
The outline of Paquetá’s defence, and the standard of proof that the FA must meet in order to convict him, and I address the issue of whether the Brazilian authorities have shared evidence with the FA.
A precis of multiple historic fix-related cases in the UK in recent decades, with explanations for why the FA has either found it too hard to prosecute them, or not had the will to do do.