On The Record With Christophe de Kepper - Fighting Illegal Betting in Sports

(ATR) IOC Director General Christophe de Kepper claims the London Olympics appear free of attempts at match-fixing and the future in the fight against corruption in sport.

De Kepper sat down with Around the Rings for this exclusive On the Record recently, saying that due to the "mafia wings" orchestrating match-fixing, sports organizations are very limited combating illegal betting.

Fighting match-fixing and illegal betting has been a key priority for de Kepper, and will likely remain one for the IOC in the near future. Multiple candidates for IOC President have listed match-fixing as one of the top challenges for the IOC. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Around the Rings: Was there anything you were looking for in particular at the London Olympics in terms of match fixing or illegal betting?

Christophe de Kepper: We have to go back to the beginning in the mid 2000s, when the IOC realized quite early that illegal betting had taken another dimension.

We started our own efforts to protect our competitions and what was said at the time was the Olympic Games were not primarily a target, even though you can never guarantee our own property could not be affected. The reason why is that the Olympics are under such a wide scrutiny that match fixing in Olympic competition seems to be a lot more risky than doing it on other kinds of competition.

We’ve seen from past examples prime events in sports can be affected enough. We learned quite early to have our own monitoring during the Games, the first time was the Beijing Olympics and since then we’ve repeated the monitoring and having rules in place in case match fixing issue would appear. We did it even in Innsbruck [Youth Olympic Games] but for the London Games there was an agreement with the police to ensure that institutions in the U.K. were supervising match fixing.

ATR: What sort of mechanism did you have in place for London to protect the Games and to monitor illegal betting?

CDK: You need three things. First you need to have your own rules in places so we adapted our own ethics rules so they prevent any participant from participating in any of our Games if they participated in betting or in illegal activities. We also ensured we have the procedures to discipline if such a case would be there or would appear. We also have the necessary indication measures on board to show the athletes the problems with match-fixing, where it can lead you. And finally you need an ability to supervise the bets without cheating. You can only do so by definition for the regular betting.

We signed an agreement with all licensed betting agencies through our own company that we set up to supervise betting to monitor all legal bets. They would communicate to our monitoring company all abnormal patterns that they would detect in betting on all sports competitions. So far we have not had any abnormalities that would force us to investigate. In London the agreement we had on top of that is with local authorities. We would work together with whatever case would come up.

ATR: I guess the big question is: What did you find in London? Was there any questionable activity during the Games?

CDK: It was completely clean as far as the licensed operators were concerned because that’s the only way of acting we have. We can sign agreements with them because they are under the scrutiny of the government. What we can never assure is that all the illegal betting offers that are on the market that will not affect sports competition and the Olympics. This is something we have worked on and the reason we have chosen to cooperate with the rest of the Olympic Movement, governments and betting companies that are insisting that governments take their own responsibility. This is for governments to regulate and to prosecute when there are illegal bets placed because we cannot have any intervention.

ATR: Do you continue to analyze intelligence from the Olympics afterwards, when will that job complete?

CDK: It’s done on the spot whenever we receive the data from the betting operators. What we do now do is a much more political role and a long distance role and we started doing it since 2009. We’ve gathered governments, betting operators, and sports organizations to think about ways of cooperating in trying to avoid and combating illegal betting. We started with the first meeting two years ago and that’s the reason we’ve done work mainly on education and information and the second aspect is monitoring.

What we just spoke about is legislation and sanctions and we’ve worked with the governments in that time to present some conclusions and some recommendations.

ATR: Ahead of the London Olympics did you have any intelligence from any government agencies or warnings that you received ahead of the Games?

CDK: No, never. Quite the contrary is the signals we’ve had so far is that the Olympics would not be the primary target in the regular field of betting but also in the irregular field of betting. That does not mean it cannot happen so we have to invest because if you do not, you are opening an invitation for those that want to fix competition to do so.

ATR: You do mention that because of the scrutiny that it is much harder to impact the Olympics by betting. Is there any other message you would like to say to sports fans to prove that the Olympics are clean?

CDK: First of all, all the measures taken from the IOC side to show that there are rules and those rules are very clear and they are explained to all participants: to say you cannot bet on any Olympic events even in other sports. That’s not just for athletes it’s for all accredited personnel at the Games. The second is to say that if that is not respected we have rules and sanctions in place and we will not hesitate to intervene if we discover an attempt or a match fixing problem and we will not hesitate to use the measures we have, as we are convinced that match fixing is really going to harm the integrity of sport.

On top of that, we have implementation measures starting with the Youth Olympic Games where we try to educate young athletes on the dangers of illegal betting. We also do this at the Olympic Games whenever possible.

The big message that the IOC would like to explain is that this is a matter we certainly do not underestimate. We really are aware that this is as big threat as doping if not more. One of the reasons is that the financial means of betting syndicates, the fact that you have mafia wings behind these match fixing syndicates, and the economics involved makes it far too big for sports organizations to be able to fight.

The big message here is that we will get nowhere without the support of the governments. We need to have a realization from the government side that this is a priority. Governments should put the right legislation on betting activities and also criminalizing a certain aspect of it. Without that, the weapons at disposal from sports organizations are really minimal.

ATR: Are governments supportive of these efforts? Are there any that are more actively engaged than others?

CDK: I would say there is support coming from many of the governments around the world. You have other countries where there is not. That is where we need to work together. That’s the reason the IOC took the initiative to bring to the table members not only national governments but also international institutions like INTERPOL , the European Union, the Council of Europe and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The Council of Europe is working on a convention on organized betting that would be open for outside countries to join that would present the first legal framework for the cooperation between member states of these governments to exchange information.

Let’s face it this is an enormous task. We need to push efforts to be maintained in the long term.

ATR: Are you happy right now with how your talks are going with these governments and with these other authorities in the combat in getting on board?

CDK: Yes, very much so. Of course it’s difficult for the IOC to coordinate all of these because they have these resources and expertise that we don’t necessarily have. It needs to be brought to an international sector. That’s the role of the IOC.

ATR: Can you elaborate on what kind of help you are getting form the Sports Federations? How willing are they to fight illegal betting?

CDK: We see where match fixers try to be active is only in competitions that are not necessarily in the spotlight. So you have to have the need to identify a system of monitoring of all these competitions. Basically the role of the federations and many of them have started to implement monitoring programs, for many of them, mainly the smaller ones, this is an additional burden and not necessarily all federations are able to work together with us. I think together with the winter federations and SportAccord we are putting together the instruments that we can help the federations address these issues.

ATR: Does the IOC just want to prevent the Olympics from being corrupted by illegal betting, or do you view your role as leading the charge against illegal betting throughout all world sport?

CDK: Certainly that we cannot live in an ivory tower and just protect the Olympic Games. It is our responsibility to help the Olympic Movement to address these issues by putting the expertise around the table and providing the necessary resources to help everybody to be more efficient and more prepared in the fight against illegal betting.

ATR: What do you have to do for Sochi and Rio?

CDK: Exactly the same; just ensure that education and prevention is key from a very early stage. Secondly we need to make sure that we have the necessary contracts in the exchange of information with the local authorities in betting and illegal betting. What we also need to ensure is that we have a monitoring system in place we will have to accompany this for Sochi and Rio with licensed operators with exchange of information for suspect patterns in betting and ensure we have our rules and procedures in place.

ATR: Looking down the line, years away, do you think creating another organization like WADA specifically for fighting illegal betting is necessary?

CDK: Time will tell and we should not close to that option. So far our dialogue is with the sports and the governments. They have indicated to us that they are not wanting to create a specific organization charged with illegal or irregular betting. That’s why we have advanced on this rather informal network that the IOC is coordinating, and we try to be pragmatic and advance these three major fields: information, education, and monitoring. Whether that will lead to a specific body in the future I will not exclude it but I think it’s a bit premature to judge today.

Written by Ed Hula III.

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