Betting on illegal online sites, a black market worth 20 billion a year

Twelve Serie A footballers are under investigation for illegal betting. They did not bet on their matches, nor did they try to fix them, according to initial indications from the investigation. Nor were they trying to get rich, as each of them earns several million euros per season. They did it out of boredom and through non-legal sites, paying off their gambling debts with the simulated purchase of luxury watches. On the other hand, as reported by Agipronews, it is the only way to play without being detected by the legal system of public gaming, which holds at Sogei the registry of all Italian players and is able to analyse - through the monitoring action of the Customs Agency and the concessionaires - the behaviour, spending and gambling of each consumer.

"That is why the footballers under investigation have turned to the operators of 'parallel' sites - unlicensed and without any form of control - that thrive in a market worth, according to Italian industry estimates, around 20 billion euro per year," Agipronews writes in a note. "It is the black market of online gambling, still thriving despite the actions and controls of the MEF and the blitz by the public prosecutor's offices in half of Italy (the last in order of time three days ago in Messina: 22 arrests). An invisible and often difficult-to-detect enemy. The Customs and Monopolies Agency (Adm) has inhibited access, from Italian soil, to almost 11 thousand illegal gambling sites accessible to Italian players, but it is not enough to defeat the criminals'.

"The advantages for those who manage games outside the rules are considerable: higher odds for bets and higher winnings for casino games, fewer constraints (from registration to betting limits, from gaming activities to permitted palimpsests) and, in general, fewer possibilities of control: for example, players banned for irregular behaviour on .it sites will be able to find their way freely to .com sites. On the other hand," continues Agipronews, "these are real virtual 'free ports': gambling transactions are often carried out in cash or using the guise of the fake purchase of goods (as in the case of Rolexes in Milan), in defiance of all national and international regulations - old and new - on money laundering. Not only that. The 'About Us' or 'Contact Us' pages of offshore sites are often 'blank' or with information that is too generic to be useful to users. The protection of the player - in the event of a dispute over a possible winnings - is in fact non-existent, since the only reference is the company holding the licence, perhaps based in a low-tax Caribbean country and without too many checks by the authorities. All the opposite of the legal system in force in Italy, which provides for a very long series of fulfilments on the part of authorised operators and a series of guarantees - regulatory and financial - to protect players and the tax authorities'.

Federal prosecutor Giuseppe Chinè has requested from the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office the acts of the new investigation strand on illegal betting. 'As soon as these arrive at the FIGC Prosecutor's Office,' writes Agipronews, 'possible violations and sanctions against the players involved will be assessed. Playing in fact, is not a crime, in general, but doing so on illegal platforms is'. For a professional, in addition to the possible consequences on the side of ordinary justice, there are possible infringements of the sporting order to be assessed: whether a player, a coach or an executive, he cannot place bets on his own discipline. For football players, for example, Article 24 of the Code of Sports Justice, which expresses the prohibition 'on the subjects of the federal system, managers, partners and members of the clubs belonging to the professional sector to make or accept bets, directly or indirectly, even from subjects authorised to receive them, that have as their object results relating to official matches organised within the framework of the FIGC, FIFA and UEFA'. Absolute ban on football betting, therefore. According to paragraph 3 of the same article, the sanction for the violation in question is a disqualification of no less than three years.