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Russian football faces match-fixing scandal

Goal.com reports details of an alleged fixed match last weekend in Russia.

Russian football rocked by match-fixing scandal

On Wednesday, Russia Today reported that the Russian Football Union was investigating claims of match fixing, following suspicious betting patterns during Terek Grozny's 3-2 win against Krylia Sovetov last Saturday.

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RIA Novosti said that Russian sports media reported before the game that one individual had staked $400,000 on a Terek win on the Betfair internet betting exchange.

Furthermore, despite Krylia being eight places above 10th-placed Terek before the match, some 96 per cent of bets placed were on a home victory. After the news broke, a number of bookmakers stopped taking bets on Terek taking all three points and odds for a home victory dropped rapidly with other bookies.

Russian football has often been plagued by rumours of fixed matches, with Terek's 2004 Russian Cup final triumph over, ironically, Krylia, alleged to have been bought for $6 million. The claims have not been proven, however.

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Russian Premier League (RPL) spokesman Igor Budnikov told the press, "There are no grounds on which to carry out an investigation into the match. Furthermore, the RPL is not the organisation to carry out an investigation; this should be done by special bodies. We are, of course, aware that after the game in Grozny there were lots of rumours, but so far there is no proof."

This is not the first scandal involving Terek Grozny. Last year, referees sent an open letter to the RPL and RFU which said they refused to work in Chechnya if cases of psychological and physical pressure on the arbiters continued there.

It followed an incident after Terek’s game against Lokomotiv Moscow, when referee Aleksey Kovalev was beaten up by unidentified persons in the Dynamo arena.


Hmm, so this club has a history of suspicious results, the betting was almost entirely on one team and there is no proof, so no grounds for an investigation. Er, I thought the whole reason you have an investigation was to try and find proof, not deny it before you've tried looking....

In a further twist, apparently they have "The Russian Football Union Commission on Ethics". That's like having an Ethics Committee in British parliament!

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