ANKARA: A huge investigation into insider betting in Turkiye’s soccer leagues is likely to widen and include coaches, commentators and club chairmen, a prosecutor was cited as saying on Thursday.
Earlier this month, Turkiye’s football federation suspended 149 referees and assistants after an investigation found that officials in the professional leagues were betting on games.
The net widened last week with the arrest of eight people, including the chairman of a top-tier club, and the suspension of 1,024 players from all leagues, on whom the football federation (TFF) imposed bans. Matches in the second and third-tier leagues were suspended for two weeks.
“We may carry out another operation in the coming days. We want to clean our football, absolutely,” Istanbul Chief Prosecutor Akin Gurlek was cited by NTV and other media on Thursday as saying.
“Whoever was involved in cheating, we are chasing them. There will be club chairmen and club executives in the probes ... There may be ties between chairmen and referees, coaches and commentators. We are investigating everything.”
Turkiye was working with European soccer governing body UEFA and global police body Interpol, Gurlek said. Authorities were also monitoring Turks suspected of illegal gambling in Montenegro, Cyprus, and Georgia.
Gurlek also said that his office was waiting for responses from some foreign betting companies abroad whose platforms were used by Turkish suspects for illegal bets.
There was no immediate comment from the TFF, but its president, Ibrahim Haciosmanoglu, has acknowledged a “moral crisis in Turkish football.”
The federation’s own investigation showed that 371 of 571 referees in Turkiye’s professional leagues had betting accounts.
Under Turkiye’s sports disciplinary regulations, if someone is found to have impacted the outcome and progression of a match or received forms of payment for this, they are banned from the sport indefinitely.
If these violations are carried out by club executives, the club is relegated and those involved face fines.