By Matt Scott
June 17 – UEFA’s Ethics and Disciplinary Inspector has recommended the inclusion of a club under criminal investigation for match fixing into next season’s Europa League competition, Insideworldfootball can reveal.
Greek team Asteras Tripolis have qualified directly for the group stages, alongside major European clubs such as Liverpool, Villarreal, Napoli and Schalke. Yet the club’s president, Georgios Borovilos, and a board member, Dimitrios Bakos – who is also president of the Greek Super League – have been charged by Athens courts for alleged match-fixing and participation in a crime ring, dating back to 2011 [see related articles below].
Insideworldfootball has found:
· That in an official UEFA submission countersigned and stamped by the Hellenic Football Federation [HFF], Asteras refused to disclose their alleged involvement in the Greek match-fixing scandal
· That despite subsequently discovering the facts, UEFA’s Ethics and Disciplinary Inspector, Miguel Liétard Fernandez-Palacios, still waved through Asteras’s participation in the Europa League
· That he did so on the basis of information received from the Hellenic Football Federation, several of whose most senior officials have been banned by the courts from all football activity pending criminal trial
· That Liétard Fernandez-Palacios is the subject of a potential conflict of interest in this case, having previously defended the HFF in a Court of Arbitration for Sport case brought by Greek club PAOK
Athens criminal prosecutors’ reports in the Greek match-fixing case run to hundreds of pages of phone-tap evidence and witness testimony. Dozens of former players, club staff, referees, Super League and HFF officials are currently awaiting trial as the judicial authorities in Athens pursue their criminal case to the fullest extent.
Yet for courts like UEFA’s Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body proof need only meet the “comfortable satisfaction” of judges – effectively proved on the balance of probabilities and a far-lower standard than in criminal prosecutions. Despite this fundamental fact of sports law, Liétard Fernández-Palacios has recommended waiting for “conclusive evidence” in the criminal courts before taking action against Asteras.
He recommended in his report, which has been obtained by Insideworldfootball: “The current proceedings shall be suspended pending the receipt of further information from the club in relation to the investigations being carried out by the courts of Greece.”
Weighing heavily in Liétard Fernández-Palacios’s considerations of the Asteras case was a hastily compiled report from the HFF’s Integrity Officer, Dimitrios Davakis. He explained that this submissions to UEFA were “not based mainly on official documentation and previous valid and authoritative information from the competent bodies, but also derive from media (newspapers, television, internet).”
There is no explanation in Fernández-Palacios’s report of how much formal corroboration he sought, and no mention of any reference to the substantial documentary evidence currently before the Athens courts. However, Davakis was keen to stress how the accused in the match-fixing case argue: “That the charges are materially unfounded given they are based solely on transcripts of discussions between third persons.
“They claim that the transcripts of these discussions are incomplete and selective and therefore inadmissible to forensic evaluation. According to them, these are arbitrarily selected excerpts of overall friendly discussions, which in fact for most of the cases are provided in summary and not even in the form of a dialogue, while also complaining the fact they were not given all the discussions.”
Davakis also told UEFA: “In any case, it is noteworthy to mention that disciplinary action was taken for two of the aforementioned three matches against Asteras Tripolis and Borovilos, and the competent Committee of Hellenic Football Federation acquitted them of the charges.”
However, the soundness of that judgement itself may be called into question. Insideworldfootball understands that several former senior HFF disciplinary committee officials have been banned by the Athens courts from any involvement in football pending criminal trial in the match-fixing ring case.
They include:
A former member of the HFF’s Appeals Committee, a former member of the Court of Arbitration of the HFF and Theodore Kouridis, the former legal adviser to the HFF, who is on €50,000 bail having been banned from leaving Greece and having any involvement in football.
Indeed, this does not appear to be an isolated incident involving UEFA’s willingness to admit alleged match-fixers into its competitions. Liétard Fernández-Palacios explains that his decision is consistent with “the recent practice of the UEFA disciplinary bodies in similar cases”, although he does not expand on the other cases he is referring to.
What is clear is that Liétard Fernández-Palacios’s judgement will set a precedent for consideration of the other clubs in the Greek match-fixing case, chief among them the Champions League group qualifiers Olympiacos. Top of the list of defendants in the criminal case is the president and principal shareholder of Olympiacos, Evangelos ‘Vangelis’ Marinakis.
Marinakis is accused of joining and directing the criminal organisation, incitement to extortion and bribery with the aim of match fixing, fraud and even incitement to a bombing that endangered human life. He is expected to enter his plea later this week.
UEFA’s deputy general secretary, Theodore Theodoridis, was a board member of the HFF from 1997 until taking up a position as UEFA’s national associations director in 2008. His father, Savvas Theodoridis, is vice-president of Olympiacos’s board of directors.
In another intriguing twist of the relationships at the highest level of UEFA, Liétard Fernández-Palacios works for Sport Advisers, a law firm belonging to Gorka Villar, whose father Angel María Villar Llona is a vice-president of UEFA and FIFA executive-committee member.
Liétard Fernandez-Palacios’s report was submitted on June 11 to the UEFA Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body and on the same day that body’s chairman, Thomas Partl, referred it to the chairman of the UEFA Appeals Body, Pedro Tomás. A final decision is pending.
UEFA pointed Insideworldfootball to its general statement regarding clubs’ admission criteria: “It is being looked at by the relevant UEFA disciplinary bodies and communication will be made once a decision has been reached on specific cases.
“We do not communicate names of clubs which are being looked into for now.”
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1745821934labto1745821934ofdlr1745821934owedi1745821934sni@t1745821934tocs.1745821934ttam1745821934