Call for phone-taps in war on illegal bets

Call for phone-taps in war on illegal bets
Nicole Jeffery
From: The Australian
AUSTRALIAN Olympic Committee president John Coates has called for a national watchdog with phone-tapping powers to monitor illegal sports betting as part of international efforts to combat a growing menace in sport.


A high-powered group of sports and government heavyweights, which included Coates and federal sports minister Mark Arbib, met in Lausanne yesterday to discuss the problem.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said afterwards they had formed a taskforce to plot a co-ordinated international response to the threat of match-fixing.

As part of the response, Coates wants to see Australia establish an independent national betting overseer with the support of the federal police and the power to tap phones and compel witnesses to give evidence.

"We need uniform criminal laws and specialised officers to conduct the investigations," Coates said.

"We need government help, the alarm bells are ringing."

He argued sports should not investigate their own athletes if they were accused of involvement in illegal gambling.

"As we found with doping, you can't trust sport to deal with these things themselves," he said.

"I think there might be a reluctance from some sports to be told what to do from an outside body, but I would urge sport not to be scared of it, because they would do themselves a favour."

Arbib has already vowed to legislate against illegal betting, with the support of the state governments, and agreed the evidence presented at the meeting supported the establishment of a national agency.

"The one area we are going to have to look at pretty closely is whether there's a need for a national body to oversee the code of conduct and work with enforcement agencies," he said.

Arbib said Victorian legislation that establishes a framework for sports to control betting on their events through negotiation with betting agencies had been well received at the forum and could be used as a model internationally. He also believes an international anti-corruption agency should be established to mirror the work of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

"It's time to take a stand internationally," Arbib said.

Rogge said international sport was in danger of being swamped by a tide of illegal betting.

"I think sport is in danger, it's not about the Olympic Games, it's about sport as a whole," Rogge said after the crisis meeting called by the IOC to tackle the problem.

"What we have from Interpol is definitely that illegal betting is on the rise, that we have to absolutely fight that, there is a sense of urgency.

"There have been documented cases of cheating and match-fixing in Sumo wrestling in Japan, there have been very recently cases very visible in cricket, there have been cases in team sports."

There were reports yesterday that one of those incriminated in the Sumo bout-fixing scandal had admitted the corruption was much wider than first reported, with about 40 wrestlers involved over the past five years.

In Lausanne, the assembly of sports officials, government ministers, betting operators and representatives of international organisations, including Interpol and the UN, pledged to form a taskforce which would develop a framework to tackle the problem by the end of the year.

Interpol secretary-general Ron Noble warned that "a collective commitment is needed or fair play in sport will disappear".

"Not having harmonised policies leads to organised crime," he said.