World’s most important side issue is fertile ground for corruption

The Global Corruption Report by Transparency International, which is dedicated to sport this year, indicated that sport is prone to massive corruption, through the management of sports organizations, match-fixing, allocation of the organization of sports events, etc.

Sarajevo, 24rd February 2016 – Only two days prior to the election of the Head of the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA), Transparency International published the Global Corruption Report on Sport. The Report, consisting of more than 60 analyses conducted by the experts, sport organizations, organized fan groups, judges, coaches and the International Olympic Committee, provides the reasons for corruption and recommendations for the fight against corruption in sport, which uses more than 145 billion dollars annually.
The Report deals a lot with the reasons and consequences of corruption affairs in the World Football Organization, which led to the suspension of Sepp Blatter and the international investigation, while Michel Platini was banned from performing all football functions for the period of 8 years. Regardless of the sanctions and the court epilogue that follow, it is still secret how much money the FIFA officials were given to allocate the organization of the football world championships to Qatar and Russia, as well as the way in which TV rights for the world’s biggest events were allocated. These affairs additionally emphasized the importance of finding the reasons and solutions for the corruption in sport.
Transparency International has made recommendations for the prevention of corruption in sport, related to the elections in sports associations and institutions and the elimination of political influences, transparent elections of the sports events hosts, support to the whistleblowers warning about the corruption in sport, report on the suspicious betting activity. TI also recommends the ratification of the Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, issued by the Council of Europe less than two years ago.
Frequent appeals to the results of the matches, and to the election procedures for the professional sports associations indicate that the sport in Bosnia and Herzegovina is prone to corruption. It reflects in the results of the national leagues, procedures regarding election of the officials in the associations, decision on allocation of the organization of the sports competitions, selection of candidates for he national teams, but also the match-fixing due to bets made by the participants and the club managers themselves.
At the presentation of the Report organized by TI BiH, Sead Lisak, Director of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption and Coordination of the Fight against Corruption, stated that the study suggested that the development of the corruption in sport is mostly influenced by the commercialization of the professional sport.
Director of Competitions Department of the Football Federation of BiH, Elmir Pilav, announced that the Disciplinary Committee of the FFBiH has made a decision according to which the statute of limitations cannot be applied to corruption cases and match-fixing, and that the individuals involved in this kind of corruption will be reported to the Prosecutor’s Office and imposed the appropriate fines if they still hold some functions in football.
„All sports associations in the country should publicly announce their financial reports and thus contribute to sport not being talked about as another „gray zone“ of society“, finally emphasized Sinisa Kisic, a member of the Presidency of BiH Olympic Committee.

Press rls 24 02 2016 eng

Complete Global Corruption Report on Sport available at: http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/sport_integrity