Turkish Football Federation chief: We will solve match-fixing together with FIFA, Interpol
İZMİR
Turkish Football Federation chairman Yıldırım Demirören. AA photo
Turkish Football Federation chairman Yıldırım Demirören said that they will receive a brief from FIFA on the vast Europol probe on match-fixing, saying they will “solve the problem together.”“Interpol and FIFA are working together on the issue and we are sure that FIFA will send every detail about the betting scandal to us,” Demirören told reporters at İzmir’s Adnan Menderes Airport. “We have no details yet, but we will have them.”
According to a statement by Europol made on Monday, there were a total of 680 suspicious matches targeted by a Singapore-based betting cartel, whose illegal activities stretched to players, referees and officials across the world.
According to reports, 79 of those games were played in Turkey, who has the leading number ahead of Swiss and German leagues.
“As far as we follow the reports, there are 79 matches monitored in Turkey,” Demirören said. “Whatever this is, we will cooperate with Interpol and FIFA and solve the problem together.
“It’s true that betting grows as the economy grows, and black money slides to here. We need to do anything in order to prevent it. It exceeds our federation, something global should be done,” he added.
Yıldırım Demirören replaced Mehmet Ali Aydınlar as the Turkish Football Federation chief last year amid a gripping match-fixing scandal in Turkey. A total of 93 football club officials, players and coaches were charged with attempting to manipulate matches from the top two Turkish football leagues during the 2010-2011 campaign, in the indictment stated by an Istanbul prosecutor. However, the Turkish Football Federation did not punish any clubs involved in the case, saying “even though there were attempts to manipulate matches, they were not reflected on the pitch.”
In the judiciary process, more than 40 people were found guilty of match-fixing by a judge, but the verdict is pending appeal.
