Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | March 2013 12 according to estimates, and FIFA says football comprises 90% of it, its popularity solidified by such digital age marvels as those that allow bettors to wager live in real time on the ebb and flow of action on the pitch as it plays out in front of them on TV. This “in-play” or “in-running” betting, as it’s called, is “particularly advantageous for criminals,” according to a 2012 report by Britain’s University of Salford, and it is especially popular in Asia, where most Web gambling takes place. Which only magnifies the problem because few Asian markets are regulated with any stringency, and many not at all. The result is a frustrating dearth of transparency. Vital data—on who is betting and where and on what and how much—is simply not available. “It’s made for corruption,”said economist David Forrest, author of the Salford report. An Interpol-led crackdown launched during the 2010 World Cup resulted in more than 5,000 arrests in some 800 illegal gambling dens in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. It made hardly a dent in the legions of kids and poor people said to be employed in Internet “sweatshops” by organizations like Mr Perumal’s to place thousands of small bets designed to evade the monitoring software of FIFA and private companies like Sportradar. For the Europeans the problem is compounded further by the popularity in Asia of the European game—many Asians having lost interest in their own contests, which are perceived as too crooked to bother with—because this means the illicit profits flowing West for the dirty work keep getting larger. The Salford study describes sports bodies and law enforcement as “particularly helpless” in the face of the “transnational resources” available to the fixers, and Mr Eaton believes the good guys haven’t helped their cause by spending too much time and resources targeting corruption in sports and not enough battling corruption in betting. “This is a global economy, a growing global economy,” he has said, “and it needs to be regulated and supervised.” The Philippines is of major concern because it is home to Asia’s largest known bookmakers, but regulation there is so lax operators are under no obligation to file accounts or to share information with sports organizations and investigators or ensure that proper know-your-customer systems are in place and maintained. Mr Eaton calls it a “gray-area betting business” where “it’s almost impossible to measure how they do business and what weaknesses they have that allow organised crime to take advantage of this.” It was to the Philippines that Vietnamese authorities traced a gambling ring they busted in January that was movingmillions out of their country on a daily basis. One seized account contained the equivalent of about US$470 million. Under duress (the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force has threatened to blacklist the country), the Philippines Congress voted in February to tighten its anti-money laundering laws. But Internet and land- based gambling were specifically omitted from the reporting requirements, the argument being that it would scare away investment. China, where Mr Perumal says his syndicate places most of its bets, is another black hole. The country’s Super League has become a byword for corruption. Match fixing is so widespread the country’s largest television network has in the past refused to broadcast its games. Two former heads of the China Football Association are serving lengthy prison sentences, as are four former national team players and a 2002 World Cup referee. They are among 33 Chinese recently expelled for life from world football. Twenty-five others have been slapped with partial bans. “It’s definitely beyond and above the world of sport, above and beyond FIFA,” says Interpol’s Ron Noble.“It’s fair to say we haven’t COVER STORY An Interpol-led crackdown launched during the 2010 World Cup resulted in more than 5,000 arrests in some 800 illegal gambling dens in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. It made hardly a dent in the legions said to be employed in Internet “sweatshops” to place thousands of small bets designed to evade the monitoring software of FIFA and companies like Sportradar. “If we kill Dan Tan then you will have no match-fixing? No, I think it’s not as easy as this.”