Summary: Investigative journalist, author and leading academic in the field of organized crime and matching fixing Declan Hill joins the show to discuss recent developments in a international law enforcement case where 680 matches have been alleged to have been fixed, both at the professional club and national team level worldwide. At the epicenter of this is a stunning press conference at the tail end of Operation Veto by Europol in which a series of criminals, operatives, officials and even players have been discovered to have links to a vast underground network of fraudulent betting schemes with links to Singapore and notorious figure named Dan Tan. This 19 month investigation has uncovered millions in profits, payouts and bribes and Declan helps us navigate the waters against the landscape of his best-selling book, The Fix, in which much of the scheme and organizations had been profiled and their methods described. None of this is new to the informed or Declan himself who first appeared on this show to explain how the Far East betting market was making moves nearly a decade ago and now an even bigger problem has washed up on the shores of European football including its highest level with the Champions League. Explored here is whether the FIFA Early Warning System has flaws and had left the scope of the problem virtually undetectable, why Dan Tan continues to avoid arrest given the international warrants outstanding, whether former integrity officer at FIFA, Chris Eaton, was marginalized and how football has continued to tolerate this problem to fester through its own inertia and inaction, choosing to offer more platitudes that real steps toward addressing this cancer on the most popular sport in the world. Match-fixing has now shown up in the backyard of FIFA and UEFA headquarters in Switzerland and now in the UK, so past ignorance and media-fueld perceptions that the match-fixing exists in lesser leagues has been handed a rude awakening. We examine whether law enforcement or football administrators have received the wake up call at last, the answer might not surprise most football fans, but leave little doubt that the problem is beyond anything once imagined.
