As the world turns its attention to the London Olympic Games, less glamorous sporting matters are discussed in Slovenian courts.
In mid-July, the first sentence was imposed in a trial on the fixing of a Slovenian championship football game between Drava Ptuj and Nafta Lendava on 11 April 2009.
On 13 July, football player Erdžan Bećiri admitted receiving 10,000 € (approx. US$12,300) to take part in the fix. Drava won the encounter 4-1.
Mr. Bećiri, 27, has agreed with the prosecution to plead guilty in exchange for a jail sentence of eight months converted to 480 hours of community work. In addition, the player was fined 1,646 € (approx. US$2,000) for corruptive behavior.
Erdžan Bećiri, a Slovenian national, turned professional in 2002. Since then, he played for nine teams in six countries: Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, Iceland, Croatia, and Austria. Interestingly, when the game between Drava and Nafta was played in the spring of 2009, Mr. Bećiri was not a member of any of the two teams. Instead, he joined Nafta, the team that lost the game, in the 2009/10 season that followed the disputed encounter.
According to some news reports, the player admitted “acting with the intention of acquiring personal profit” in Croatia as well. These are code words for involvement in further match-fixing: apparently, the prosecution has evidence that Mr. Bećiri took part in an unsuccessful attempt to fix a Croatian national league game between Šibenik and Zadar on 11 April 2009, the same day as the Drava-Lendava encounter. Zadar (the team Mr. Bećiri played for at the time) was supposed to lose but the game ended up in a draw instead. Further details of the player’s testimony could not be verified and are reported here from secondary sources.
Reportedly, the player originally pleaded innocent but changed the plea to guilty after the prosecution presented copious evidence of the wrongdoing. Proof included telephone wiretapping and text messages.
Also accused in the trial held at the Maribor district court are Dušan Bogdanović, Mario Cvrtak, and Dragan Mihelič. None of them appeared in court on 13 July: Mr. Bogdanović excused himself as he is currently playing football in Indonesia, while Mr. Cvrtak and Mr. Mihelič are in custody for a match-fixing trial in Bochum, Germany. Mr. Bogdanović, now 33, took part in the fix as a defensive player on Nafta’s team.
After news of Mr. Bećiri’s sentence was made public, the Slovenian Football Federation issued a media statement condemning all kind of match-fixing activity and affirming the federation’s zero-tolerance policy regarding these matters. The statement said the federation would start a disciplinary proceeding against Mr. Bećiri and inform both European and international football federations, UEFA and FIFA, about its outcome.
UEFA president Michel Platini recently said that the football career of any player convicted of match-fixing would be over . Meanwhile, Erdžan Bećiri will continue his football career with Víkingur Ólafsvík in the Icelandic First Division (second national league tier). The team announced his addition to the team on 16 July, three days after the player pleaded guilty. Transfermarkt, a specialized football website, estimates the player’s market value to be 150,000 € (US$185,000).
Most national media outlets that reported the story drew extensively from stories originally published in Večer, a regional daily based in Maribor, and by the Slovenian Press Agency. Even errors were not exempt from reproduction: some journalists, for instance, reported that “the prosecution sentenced the player to eight months in prison,” a detail originally included in the item written by the Slovenian Press Agency. Obviously, the prosecution does not sentence defendants, judges and courts do—even when the sentence is part of an agreement. While this may be considered by some an irrelevant detail or a formality, it speaks about Slovenian sports journalists’ poor understanding of basic prosecuting procedures. Regardless of whether this error derives from ignorance or superficiality, such journalists will hardly be able to pursue and report on stories related to transparency and governance in sport where formal details are frequently of the essence.
Further, several reports described the sentence as the ultimate confirmation that Slovenian football is not immune from match-fixing. In fact, such confirmation came over a year ago when Croatian fixers confessed at a trial in Bochum to fixing a series of games including that between Drava and Nafta on 11 April 2009. Investigative journalist Declan Hill published on his website the list of games on 23 March 2011, 16 months before Slovenian media picked up this “ultimate confirmation.”
More serious doubts and questions arise from the story: usually, a single player on the fixers’ payroll is not enough to rig a football game. As Dr. Hill wrote in his book on fixing in professional football, The Fix, it usually takes four or five players to ensure a loss. Journalists should thus ask who, besides Mr. Bogdanović, might be involved and should be charged with fraud in the case of the game between Drava and Nafta. It also seems very unlikely that the fixers—as any corrupt person—would fix only once in a championship. Finding a local go-between with connections among the players, and him finding players willing to play along, is the hardest part. It is thus very unlikely that fixers would fix only one game after setting everything up and initially getting away with it.
Last but not least, the sanction agreed between prosecutors and Erdžan Bećiri hardly seems a deterrent for other potential fixers. The player was fined 1,646 € after confessing to receiving 10,000 €, netting a profit of 8,354 €. A 16.4% tax rate is even lower than local salary taxes.
Hopefully, this sentence in sports fraud will stimulate some sports journalists in Slovenia to start developing an interest in issues of governance and transparency. Thus far, media interest in topics that transcend pre-game and post-game reports has been scarce. However, there seems to be murky activity going on in both local and national sports contexts.
Football Player Admits Involvement in Match Fixing
As the world turns its attention to the London Olympic Games, less glamorous sporting matters are discussed in Slovenian courts.
In mid-July, the first sentence was imposed in a trial on the fixing of a Slovenian championship football game between Drava Ptuj and Nafta Lendava on 11 April 2009.
On 13 July, football player Erdžan Bećiri admitted receiving 10,000 € (approx. US$12,300) to take part in the fix. Drava won the encounter 4-1.
Mr. Bećiri, 27, has agreed with the prosecution to plead guilty in exchange for a jail sentence of eight months converted to 480 hours of community work. In addition, the player was fined 1,646 € (approx. US$2,000) for corruptive behavior.
Erdžan Bećiri, a Slovenian national, turned professional in 2002. Since then, he played for nine teams in six countries: Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, Iceland, Croatia, and Austria. Interestingly, when the game between Drava and Nafta was played in the spring of 2009, Mr. Bećiri was not a member of any of the two teams. Instead, he joined Nafta, the team that lost the game, in the 2009/10 season that followed the disputed encounter.
According to some news reports, the player admitted “acting with the intention of acquiring personal profit” in Croatia as well. These are code words for involvement in further match-fixing: apparently, the prosecution has evidence that Mr. Bećiri took part in an unsuccessful attempt to fix a Croatian national league game between Šibenik and Zadar on 11 April 2009, the same day as the Drava-Lendava encounter. Zadar (the team Mr. Bećiri played for at the time) was supposed to lose but the game ended up in a draw instead. Further details of the player’s testimony could not be verified and are reported here from secondary sources.
Reportedly, the player originally pleaded innocent but changed the plea to guilty after the prosecution presented copious evidence of the wrongdoing. Proof included telephone wiretapping and text messages.
Also accused in the trial held at the Maribor district court are Dušan Bogdanović, Mario Cvrtak, and Dragan Mihelič. None of them appeared in court on 13 July: Mr. Bogdanović excused himself as he is currently playing football in Indonesia, while Mr. Cvrtak and Mr. Mihelič are in custody for a match-fixing trial in Bochum, Germany. Mr. Bogdanović, now 33, took part in the fix as a defensive player on Nafta’s team.
After news of Mr. Bećiri’s sentence was made public, the Slovenian Football Federation issued a media statement condemning all kind of match-fixing activity and affirming the federation’s zero-tolerance policy regarding these matters. The statement said the federation would start a disciplinary proceeding against Mr. Bećiri and inform both European and international football federations, UEFA and FIFA, about its outcome.
UEFA president Michel Platini recently said that the football career of any player convicted of match-fixing would be over . Meanwhile, Erdžan Bećiri will continue his football career with Víkingur Ólafsvík in the Icelandic First Division (second national league tier). The team announced his addition to the team on 16 July, three days after the player pleaded guilty. Transfermarkt, a specialized football website, estimates the player’s market value to be 150,000 € (US$185,000).
Most national media outlets that reported the story drew extensively from stories originally published in Večer, a regional daily based in Maribor, and by the Slovenian Press Agency. Even errors were not exempt from reproduction: some journalists, for instance, reported that “the prosecution sentenced the player to eight months in prison,” a detail originally included in the item written by the Slovenian Press Agency. Obviously, the prosecution does not sentence defendants, judges and courts do—even when the sentence is part of an agreement. While this may be considered by some an irrelevant detail or a formality, it speaks about Slovenian sports journalists’ poor understanding of basic prosecuting procedures. Regardless of whether this error derives from ignorance or superficiality, such journalists will hardly be able to pursue and report on stories related to transparency and governance in sport where formal details are frequently of the essence.
Further, several reports described the sentence as the ultimate confirmation that Slovenian football is not immune from match-fixing. In fact, such confirmation came over a year ago when Croatian fixers confessed at a trial in Bochum to fixing a series of games including that between Drava and Nafta on 11 April 2009. Investigative journalist Declan Hill published on his website the list of games on 23 March 2011, 16 months before Slovenian media picked up this “ultimate confirmation.”
More serious doubts and questions arise from the story: usually, a single player on the fixers’ payroll is not enough to rig a football game. As Dr. Hill wrote in his book on fixing in professional football, The Fix, it usually takes four or five players to ensure a loss. Journalists should thus ask who, besides Mr. Bogdanović, might be involved and should be charged with fraud in the case of the game between Drava and Nafta. It also seems very unlikely that the fixers—as any corrupt person—would fix only once in a championship. Finding a local go-between with connections among the players, and him finding players willing to play along, is the hardest part. It is thus very unlikely that fixers would fix only one game after setting everything up and initially getting away with it.
Last but not least, the sanction agreed between prosecutors and Erdžan Bećiri hardly seems a deterrent for other potential fixers. The player was fined 1,646 € after confessing to receiving 10,000 €, netting a profit of 8,354 €. A 16.4% tax rate is even lower than local salary taxes.
Hopefully, this sentence in sports fraud will stimulate some sports journalists in Slovenia to start developing an interest in issues of governance and transparency. Thus far, media interest in topics that transcend pre-game and post-game reports has been scarce. However, there seems to be murky activity going on in both local and national sports contexts.
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About Simon Ličen
Simon Ličen is a researcher, lecturer and author in sport, media and communication.