The United Nations (UN) has called for an urgent, unified and international response to fight malpractice and fraud in sports betting.
This was disclosed in a report released on Thursday by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The publication, a first-ever Global Report on Corruption in Sport says up to $1.7 trillion is estimated to be wagering on illicit betting markets each year.
According to the UN, the ground-breaking new report was issued to coincide with International Anti-Corruption Day, marked each 9 December annually.
The UN Agency, reveals a “staggering scale, manifestation, and complexity of corruption and organized crime in sport at the global, regional, and national levels.”
It described the report as the most in-depth review of its type to date as it is being developed in partnership with nearly 200 experts from across government, sports’ organizations, private sector, and academia.
While noting that corruption in sports is not new, it pointed out to a “substantial increase” in the past two decades as Unsplash/Anastasiia Chepinska also analysed the role of illegal betting and competition manipulation.
It acknowledged the susceptibility of major sporting events to fraudsters, and the involvement of organized crime, among others while calling for a legal, policy and institutional frameworks to curb the trend which threatens the essence of sports in general.
The report , which includes a playbook with concrete policy considerations, calls for more cooperation and exchange of information among sport organizations, crime prevention and criminal justice authorities and policymakers.
The report is launched ahead of next week’s biennial UN anti-corruption gathering, the Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, being held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt from 13 to 17 December
