This Tuesday, the entity was criminally denounced by legislators from the City of Buenos Aires, for alleged illicit association, influence peddling, bribery, and omission.
Argentina.- The cases of match-fixing by players, referees, club officials up to influencers do not cease. This time the Argentine Football Association (AFA) was under public scrutiny due to the criminal complaint, filed on Tuesday, November 19, by the legislators of the City of Buenos Aires Graciela Ocaña and María Sol Méndez for an «alleged illicit association».
According to Clarín, the complaint arises from «situations of alleged bribes and possible manipulations of sporting events, more precisely of football matches in the Argentine lower leagues, with the aim of obtaining extraordinary profit through sports betting associated with those results».
In turn, this complaint is supported by a series of journalistic articles that narrate the different networks of the world of betting in Argentine football and warns that «news about these suspected manipulation acts entered the AFA building on Viamonte street, but at least publicly it was not known that the governing body of football had taken any intervention or had reported them to the justice».
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According to the local media, it uses as one of the precedents the case that involved the club El Porvenir, which ended with five players charged and with the conviction of a representative, Brian Simone, to six months of suspended prison. And it also demands to investigate, the debut of the streamer Spreen in Deportivo Riestra and his possible link with illegal betting.
«It is imperative to ask why its directors would have adopted such strangely omissive behavior. The criminal investigation we promote will provide the answers, but it is not illogical to venture that their silence in the face of such displays of sports perversion might be motivated to some degree –in the best of cases- by complicit tolerance», the document explains.
And, from other journalistic publications, it adds: «These impressive revelations authorize to conclude that in the world of football organized by the AFA, there would exist a gigantic network of influence trafficking in which the players themselves, their representatives, the directors of the affiliated clubs, and many other intermediaries who participate in the business of the round ball would be involved».
The document adds: «These shameful episodes would have allowed the involved to obtain extraordinary gains of at least four million pesos, by simply betting on a 3-0 defeat of Atenas, to which would be added a prize for guessing the two goals suffered in the first half, and combinations of how many players would be cautioned. One of the winning bets would have been made from the personal account of the president of the Club's own son, Federico Felippa, who would have been a necessary participant in the manipulation of the final score that allowed him to win an online bet», the complaint specifies.
The Specialized Prosecutor's Office in Gambling (FEJA), led by Juan Rozas, initiated ex officio a case to investigate whether on Monday, November 11, on the occasion of the football match between Deportivo Riestra and Vélez Sarsfield, the coach of the blanquinegro club, Cristian Fabbiani and the influencer Ivan Buhajeruk, alias «Spreen», aimed to attract bettors on illegal platforms.
Meanwhile, following the viralization of Whatsapp conversations between the referee Nicolás Jara and a foreign bettor where they coordinated how the confrontations should unfold, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) determined to suspend him from his activities while an internal investigation is underway.
For his part, the case of Federico Felippa, the president of the Atenas de Río Cuarto football club, was discovered by the justice of Córdoba for the manipulation of his team's results to obtain economic benefits through an online betting platform.
