Bulgaria is the latest country to be bitten by the match-fixing bug and local authorities are determined to nip it in the bud before the country’s football leagues get completely infiltrated.
The Bulgarian Football Union announced on Monday that it had received information from a regional police department about an investigation the latter was doing over a possible match-fixing episode involving two teams in the bottom half of the league’s table. It’s the first of this sort to be undertaken in Bulgaria, even if the country has been reportedly rife with match-fixing for years.
That being said, this isn’t the first time the BFU has reported on claims of match-fixing in the country but state prosecutors have either been too lazy or too indifferent to act on these cases and understandably drawing the ire of the European Commission over the lack of action being taken in the country.
But now that the Bulgarian police is involved, the hope is that something will finally get done. In doing so, the amendments the country made to its penal code in 2011 that makes match-fixing and illegal sports betting a crime – anyone convicted of attempting to fix events will face up to six years in jail – will final get its long sought-after teeth.
Better late than never, so the saying goes. Hopefully, the country finally begins to understand the problem brought about by match-fixing and the magnitude by which it can destroy the integrity of the sport.
We all know how bad things can get if match-fixing spirals out of control. There have been far too many cautionary tales and adding another country to that list of those that can’t control its reach would be a damn shame.
