By Osasu Obayiuwana
December 17 – Samson Siasia, the former Nigeria striker and manager of the Super Eagles, has accused the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) of failing to help him fight against the life ban imposed on him in August by FIFA, world football’s governing body, for match-fixing.
December 10 – A Spanish court has cleared 36 players and five others of match-fixing relating to a top-flight survival decider between Levante and Real Zaragoza in the final round of the 2010-11 season.
November 29 – Leading referees and officials are among 12 people arrested in Bosnia in a match-fixing investigation into the country’s second division.
November 14 – Former Nigeria international Dickson Etuhu has been found guilty of attempted match-fixing in Sweden where he last played.
September 25 – Two separate initiatives, one targeting match-fixing, the other pirate broadcasting, are being launched by UEFA.
August 22 – Superliga Argentina has engaged Genius Sports to monitor betting markets for susipicion of match-fixing within its competition as well as conduct a series of educational integrity workshops.
August 20 – The Nigeria Football Federation is standing by its former national coach Samson Siasia saying it is “shocked” by the life ban for bribery meted out by FIFA and vowing to help overturn it.
August 19 – Yet another prominent African footballing figure has been thrown out of the game for bribery related to match-fixing, with FIFA hitting former Nigeria coach Samson Siasia with a life ban.
By Paul Nicholson
August 16 – A new report tracking the match-fixing trends and number of suspicious betting patterns in matches worldwide has found a small percentage drop in the number of ‘suspicious’ matches, but an increased activity at youth, international, friendly and women’s matches.
August 2 – The Asian Football Confederation has banned four players for life for attempting to fix matches in the AFC Cup in 2017 and 2018.
August 1 – The Bundesliga and Sportradar have renewed their match-fixing monitoring and integrity services partnership for a further two years.
July 30 – The German FA (DFB – Deutscher Fussball Bund) has selected Genius Sports to monitor more than 7,500 fixtures for match-fixing and betting-related corruption activity.
July 29 – Following the suspension of all betting markets on the Swedish second tier following a series of match-fixing alerts, Svenska Spel has said the only solution to the problem is to suspend all betting, indefinitely on the league.
July 26 – Abu Bakarr Kabba, former administrative secretary of the Sierra Leone Football Association, is the latest African official to be sanctioned by FIFA for taking bribes as part of FIFA’s investigation into notorious matchfixer Wilson Raj Perumal.
July 23 – Former Botswana Football Association (BFA) general secretary Mooketsi Kgotlele has been banned for life by FIFA for accepting bribes in the latest serious misdemeanour to rock the image of African football.