How ULIS connects law enforcement with sports to combat match fixing

Francisco Portugal is a Criminal Intelligence Officer seconded from the Portuguese National Police (Polícia Judiciária), where he served for more than 10 years as a Criminal Investigator, focusing on cases of corruption, and trafficking of performance-enhancing drugs. Currently, he is seconded to INTERPOL’s Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre, which leads the INTERPOL Match-Fixing Task Force.

Portugal specializes in corruption in sports and the illicit trade of performance-enhancing substances. In this interview, he discusses the work and key INTERPOL partners, including the United Lotteries for Integrity in Sport (ULIS).

Online sports betting continues to grow, while sports competition manipulation occurs across an increasing number of sports. What are some of the biggest challenges for law enforcement authorities?

Law enforcement authorities (LEA) face significant challenges in combating sports competition manipulation, especially with the rise of online sports betting.

The biggest challenge is the transnational nature of these cases, with Organized Criminal Groups (OCGs) targeting multiple sports and countries simultaneously, making it more complicated for LEA to investigate cases across borders. In many cases, LEA may not have the necessary resources and expertise to effectively investigate complex sports manipulation cases, which often involve advanced technologies such as sophisticated online betting schemes, specialized software, blockchain and encrypted communication tools. The use of illegal betting operators, mule accounts and fake profiles further increases anonymity, adding even more difficulties for LEA investigations.

What tools and strategies are available to help you fight this global phenomenon?

Cooperation is key!

LEA, with their significant investigative capability including searches, seizures, suspect questioning, surveillance and wiretaps must lead this fight.

However, LEA cannot tackle this issue alone. Support from other key stakeholders is essential:

• The sports community, with itsknowledge of the sports and their actors
• The betting industry, with expertisein betting and access to betting data
• Governments, which can establish andenforce robust legislative frameworks against sports competition manipulation

All these stakeholders bring unique expertise, tools and capabilities to help to fight this global threat.

INTERPOL, the world’s largest international police organization with 196 member countries, assists law enforcement agencies in fighting all forms of transnational crime.
The INTERPOL Match-Fixing Task Force (IMFTF), created in 2011, forms the focus of INTERPOL’s operational response in this area. It supports member countries with investigations and law enforcement operations across all sports and maintains a global network of investigators.

The Task Force includes 120 member countries, with close to 200 National Points of Contact worldwide. It serves as a platform for sharing experiences, best practices and coordinating investigations and international.

With its global reach, the IMFTF is uniquely positioned to connect all stakeholders to unite efforts against sports competition manipulation.

What are the benefits of being involved with ULIS as a partner?

ULIS is a global association with a multi-stakeholder network, including licensed state lotteries. Through ULIS, LEA can gain direct access to the betting industry, which can provide betting monitoring reports, bookmaker information, details on betting patterns, suspicious customer accounts, betting histories and other relevant data.

ULIS bi-weekly and monthly monitoring reports, shared with the IMFTF, are good examples of this cooperation. By reviewing these reports, the IMFTF can clearly identify the reasons behind betting alerts, their timing (pre-game, in-play or post-game), geographic distribution and the different sports involved. This helps the IMFTF connect alerts with ongoing cases in the member countries it supports.

Additionally, ULIS can detect trends and anticipate threats through its network, raising these issues with LEAs via the IMFTF.

How does INTERPOL contribute to the ULIS network?

The IMFTF is fully committed to combating sports competition manipulation. It works closely with ULIS and its network to protect the integrity of sports, ensuring they remain fair, clean and free from corruption.

As a key partner, INTERPOL contributes to the ULIS network with a multi-faceted approach:

• Raising awareness by sharing trends,experiences, best practices
• Contributing to the identificationof potential solutions and key recommendations
• Supporting the efforts of allstakeholders to tackle sports competition manipulation and disrupt illegalbetting operations.

How can ULIS further enhance the support it provides to its network?

The support provided by ULIS to the network proven highly valuable. Its bi-weekly reports and monthly monitoring reports are prime examples, enabling crosschecks with ongoing cases and allowing the IMFTF to inform member countries of any matches, prompting further collaboration with ULIS to obtain additional information/data for LEA.

However, in this field, data is never enough. Greater data sharing will allow the IMFTF to conduct deeper crosschecks using INTERPOL’s 19 databases, and our Financial Crime Analysis File. These resources help LEA identify connections among isolated cases across different jurisdictions, close gaps and trigger international cooperation.

Only through robust data sharing can we take the next step in tackling sports competition manipulation and disrupting illegal betting operations.

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