The days of a football match being sold off by players to their opponents through a financial transaction at the bar have long gone by. And, yet, the existing legislative set-up dealing with sports corruption, a relic of the 1970s, still looks at this malaise in such a rudimentary way.

Today, corruption networks have become tremendously sophisticated with match-fixing being perpetrated by people who have no direct interest, as may have been in the past, in the teams they try to ‘fix’. These are multinational criminal gangs that derive huge amounts of profits from online betting on multiple permutations throughout a single game. Some of the betting sites used are legitimate – indeed, the betting companies themselves would be victims as well – and others are unregulated and mostly based in South East Asia.

The money generated for the profiteers from a single fixed game could run into hundreds of thousands of euros. A trickle of those funds would make it into the pockets of the players, who would have agreed to fix the game.

The illegal business is worth millions, if not billions, of euros annually. What society is dealing with here is a complex web of cross-border financial transactions and bets placed on game outcomes that may escape immediate suspicion.

In the words of Sports Parliamentary Secretary Chris Agius, this is sophisticated organised crime that is complex to deal with. It is within this context that a proposed law to tackle sports corruption as manifest in the 21st century gains tremendous importance.

The draft was recently presented to the anti-corruption task force captained by the Malta Football Association and which includes other stakeholders such as the government, the Opposition, the Malta Gaming Authority and the police.

Some of the more salient provisions include stiffer penalties, which could see athletes and club officials guilty of sport corruption facing up to five years in prison and interdiction from sporting events. Fines will also increase into the thousands of euros to reflect the size of the illicit gains.

The proposed law signals a resolve to tackle a malaise that has soured the world of sports. However, updating the law to reflect modern-day exigencies is only a first step and it would be wrong to withdraw into complacency once Parliament legislates in this way.

The problem with sports corruption is that getting the proof to nail the culprits in court is difficult and requires a different sort of policing that is based on intelligence gathering. This aspect of law enforcement is something that also holds true for other sophisticated white collar crimes and those perpetrated by highly organised criminal networks.

It would be useless having a good law unless it is enforced. The police require a specialised beefed-up unit that draws from existing entities within it like economic crimes, cybercrime and the vice squad. This means more human resources, better training and tools to track online transactions and draw up patterns indicative of criminal activity.

Admittedly, it is not easy getting to the bottom of sports corruption to the level required for court prosecution. But that is not a reason to take a step back. We owe it to our children not to allow the positive values of sports to be tainted by dark forces.

The law will be a positive step forward but, maybe, what is required before anything else is an iron-willed crackdown on corruption, wherever it may be present, without fear or favour.

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