KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 20, (Agencies): Football authorities vowed Wednesday to excise the “cancer” of match-fixing but said tougher laws were needed worldwide to smash criminal syndicates suspected of rigging hundreds of matches. FIFA’s director of security Ralf Mutschke told a two-day gathering with Interpol that the world governing body’s “zero tolerance” for match-fixing must be buttressed by “the right policies for law enforcement and the football community”. The meeting follows revelations a fortnight ago that almost 700 matches worldwide, including Champions League ties and World Cup qualifiers, were targeted by gambling gangs. “We are banning players and referees for life but criminals are out there free — they get no sentence. That’s wrong,” Mutschke told reporters when asked to comment on Singapore’s refusal to arrest a key suspect wanted in Italy and suspected of rigging games.

“We have to bring in governments to change legislation and laws. Many countries do not have laws to fight match manipulation,” Mutschke said. He pointed to the November acquittal of three players in Switzerland accused of committing fraud by throwing games, where a judge said there was no obvious victim. Mutschke said FIFA was cooperating with the Council of Europe to draft legislation to fight match-fixing, with hopes it would be implemented across the continent. FIFA’s legal team will also press the case at a May meeting of national sports ministers in Berlin where match-fixing is due to be discussed, he said. About 150 delegates from Asian football associations, player and referee representatives and government agencies are meeting in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, home to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

“We are ready to work hand-in-hand to eradicate this cancer from the game. AFC will not rest until this plague is completely stamped out in Asia,” the AFC’s acting president Zhang Jilong said in a speech. But he later admitted to AFP that eradication “could be difficult, especially in Asia”, where gambling is widespread and flourishing. Indicating the scale of football corruption in Asia, China on Monday handed out 33 lifetime bans in its biggest ever match-fixing scandal, which left senior officials in jail and saw the Shanghai Shenhua squad stripped of its 2003 title. Other scandals in the region include one that engulfed South Korea’s K-League, one of Asia’s most successful competitions, where corruption revelations in 2011 left 41 players with lifetime bans. “Match-fixing is too complex and widespread for one organisation to fight it alone. To fight this, we need a joint and coordinated effort,” Zhang said.

Peter Velappan, a retired former AFC general-secretary, told AFP that football authorities must also press for strict punishments in any laws aimed at match-fixing. “This move to criminalise it is exactly what is needed but it must be clear and hard from the start to be a good example,” said Velappan. According to European police agency Europol, 380 suspicious match results have been identified in Europe, among nearly 700 worldwide, with the problem tied to a criminal syndicate based in Singapore. Police in Singapore are calling for hard evidence before acting against Dan Tan Seet Eng, a Singaporean whose name has cropped up in probes across several countries. Mutschke said that “to the best of our knowledge” FIFA’s World Cup tournament, the finals of which will be held in Brazil next year, has not been infiltrated by organised crime. Fearful footballers in Asia need better protection, education and a trusting environment before they can aid whistleblowing against match-fixing, the regional head of world player union FIFPro told Reuters. “We have still got a long, long, long way to go in addressing the fears players have in Asia,” Schwab said in a telephone interview.

“Unless players fully understand their rights and obligations then they are not going to be in a position to report suspicious behaviour or even approaches to be involved in fixing matches. “We have got players in Asia that are fearful of even forming a players’ association or reporting contractual breaches so that level of fear needs to be addressed.” While the revelations of the European police investigation rippled around the world, the least surprised corner was Asia, where match-fixing has been long identified as a problem with recent issues in South Korea, Malaysia and China. Schwab, an Australian who was elected to the FIFPro board in 2008, said that the fearless criminals allegedly orchestrating the match-fixing posed a great concern for possible player confessions. “You are dealing with organised crime who will take whatever measures are necessary to implement their plan. “Players, if they are going to report instances, not only need someone to report it to who they trust, they also need to be protected and there need to be security arrangements around them. “As you can imagine, these are all resource-intensive and rather sophisticated operations so sport needs to take it very, very seriously.”