Sports betting in Asia: AFC signs anti-match fixing MoU with IBIA
The AFC and IBIA will work to detect irregular betting patterns and suspicious activities in football matches across Asia.
Asia.- The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has signed a four-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) with the aim of collaborating to identify unusual betting trends and suspicious activities in football games in Asia. Utilising its Monitoring and Alert Platform, IBIA will provide real-time information on suspicious betting behaviour, boosting the AFC’s capacity to investigate potential match-fixing.
The AFC general counsel and director of Legal Affairs, Mr Andrew Mercer said: “The AFC’s Vision and Mission has outlined our steadfast ambitions to uphold the highest ethical and sporting standards, and we are committed to preserving our key tenets of fair play and integrity.
“Leveraging on strong collaborations with the world’s leading organisations is imperative to our fight against match-fixing and this MoU with IBIA further strengthens our ability to ensure football in Asia remains clean for the benefit of our future generation of fans, players and all our valued stakeholders.”
Khalid Ali, CEO of IBIA, said: “Cooperation is a vital part of any effective integrity monitoring and investigatory framework and IBIA is delighted to be able to strengthen its relationship with the AFC through this important information-sharing collaboration. For its part, IBIA will seek to safeguard the AFC ecosystem by utilising the monitoring of its members’ global customer account activity, which covers over $300bn in sports betting per annum.”
Mr. Mercer added: “The AFC is committed to promoting integrity, ethics, and fair play in Asian football and we are pleased to work with IBIA as we strive to enhance our capabilities to monitor and address suspicious activities, ensuring that football in Asia is safeguarded from the threats of match manipulation.”
The announcement of the agreemet comes a few weeks after Chinese police reported they have dismantled over 500 criminal gangs and resolved 825 criminal cases related to illegal football gambling as the result of a summer operation launched on June 24.
Also, in an unrelated case, 43 people were banned from Chinese football for life after a two-year investigation into illicit gambling and match-fixing in Chinese domestic sports. They included the former China internationals as well as former South Korean international Son Jun-ho.
