The history of Huracan Melilla is as short as it is disreputable. They were the football club founded out of the autonomous Spanish city of Melilla on the North African coast in 2020, ambitious upstarts seemingly aiming big. Inside three years, though, they had been disgraced and dissolved.
The central thread running through Huracan Melilla’s story were the allegations of match-fixing and then the multiple arrests of some of those connected to the club. Seventeen came in the summer of 2023, shortly after a season in the Spanish fifth tier had ended with 27 defeats from 30 games. Huracan’s goal difference was minus 111 and they were, by a distance, Spain’s worst team.
The authorities had tracked their results — and betting patterns around them — with a long-standing interest. An 8-0 defeat to Levante in the Copa del Rey in 2021 had brought the first investigations and arrests before the suspicious wagers continued through the final weeks of that dismal 2022-23 campaign. The General Directorate for the Regulation of Gambling in Spain and La Liga both received alerts that led to local police, supported by Europol, moving on the suspects in July 2023.
Allegations against those arrested included belonging to a criminal organisation, corruption between individuals in a sports field, fraud, money laundering and document forgery. It was confirmed to The Athletic this week that the case is still under investigation and that a trial is yet to take place.
Europol, supporting officers from the Policia Nacional, called the suspects “members of an organised criminal network” at the point of arrest in the summer of 2023. Or, in short, a complex, coordinated operation with the corruption of sport at its heart.
Seldom do the stories of match-fixing ever begin and end with an individual gone rogue. There are often dozens involved, all operating within a structure, including facilitators, agents and fixers. The plans are detailed and, most importantly, can bring high rewards. Criminal minds find obvious attractions, positioning match-fixing as part of a wider enterprise.
In the same year as Huracan were shamed and eventually wound up, the United Nations, through their Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) described match-fixing as “an increasingly prevalent modern manifestation of corruption,” with the threat to sport’s integrity built, in part, by organised criminals seeking to “advance their own interests”.
“We do see infiltration by organised crime groups (OCGs),” Lucy Myles, Head of the Financial Crime Team at Europol’s European Economic and Financial Crime Centre, tells The Athletic.
“They see it as low risk. They’re motivated because, usually, the penalties are very small (upon conviction). People take the risks now because the risk-reward is not comparable. That’s why it’s seen as a soft touch for OCGs.”
Historic match-fixing cases have included clear links to money laundering, forged documents, fraud and even human trafficking. A tangled web of criminal activity can have the outcome of a sporting event interwoven through its plans.
It is six years since Europol published a detailed report that examined the links between organised crime groups and corruption in sport. The pattern was not considered new, with the European Parliament formally addressing the matter as far back as 2013, but it was found that OCGs were involved in sports corruption on a “transnational level”. Estimates found that criminal proceeds from match-fixing totalled €120million (£104m; $140m) annually.
The challenges of the landscape have evolved through technological advancements and the rise of cryptocurrency but the threat is unmoved. “Criminal networks are often the ‘engine’ behind sports corruption, and often use this criminal activity to launder their illicitly obtained assets,” Europol’s 2020 report said.
It was found the threats most typically came from Asian criminal syndicates, a region that accounted for approximately 65 per cent of the global betting market. Tellingly, though, “cooperative relationships” with European OCGs were also noted. Mafia-type criminal organisations, including the Russian Thieves in Law, were referenced by name.
More recent times have seen links drawn between mafia gangs and match-fixing in Ecuadorian football. Several footballers were shot and killed last year, including one-time international Mario Pineida. US ambassador to Ecuador, Michael Fitzpatrick, had claimed two years earlier that criminals were laundering money through the country’s football clubs.
Military personnel guard the site where Mario Pineida was killed in Guayaquil, Ecuador (Marcos Pin / AFP via Getty Images)
There was also the murder of Stavros Demosthenous last year, shot in a mafia-style execution. He was the owner of Cypriot second division club Karmiotissa and was widely reported to have had links to the island’s criminal underworld. Six men are due to stand trial for Demosthenous’ murder.
There have so far been no direct links outlined between any of those killings and match-fixing but the dangers to sport’s integrity through criminal links have long been noted by international authorities.
Interpol, the world’s largest police organisation with 196 member states, established the Interpol Match-Fixing Task Force (IMFTF), while Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union, also dedicates significant resources to tackling corruption — and its root causes — within sport.
Europol signed a new and extended memorandum of understanding with UEFA in November, designed to address the “developing organised crime related challenges”. UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said the partnership would help halt the “criminal exploitation” of football in Europe.
“We know football attracts organised crime,” says one integrity officer at a national football association, speaking anonymously as he was not authorised to do so.
“The risk is low because it’s difficult to be proven, it’s considered less important by state authorities compared to extortion and blackmail. The penalties are low. But match manipulation is a way to launder illegal money. Selling of weapons, drugs, human trafficking, prostitution — real serious criminal activity.”
“We see a lot of polycriminal, organised crime groups (involved in match-fixing),” says Myles, in an interview with The Athletic in Europol’s headquarters in the Hague, in the Netherlands.
“We see document fraud, which can allow setting up of betting accounts for betting mules to carry out and use them to place bets. We also see money laundering organisations involved because they take the money generated from other crime areas, they launder it through betting.
“The OCGs are coordinated. There are some cases where you have individuals placing small bets but you also see where it’s very targeted, very coordinated. It is coming from OCGs, who are using it as a means to clean.”
Europol headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands (Phil Buckingham/The Athletic)
These operations, says Myles, can have many layers. She details the “key” middle men and women, who “exert real control working on behalf of the OCGs”. She adds: “They’re the ones who lead the boots on the ground.”
At the bottom of the pile, meanwhile, are what is known as a “betting mule”, individuals tasked with placing the coordinated bets under instruction and using money supplied by those making the fix. Europol were part of an operation in 2024 that led to the arrest of 53 suspects who acted as betting mules in Madrid and Guadalajara, Spain.
That criminal network was said to have fixed football, tennis and table tennis matches in more than 20 countries, including Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia and Bolivia. The OCG was found to have control of over 1,500 betting accounts and amassed winnings of approximately €2million (£1.7m; $2.3m) when staking money on predetermined results.
“These individuals are recruited to place the bets, either physically going to bookmakers or they’re online with accounts they’ve set up,” explains Myles. “In a lot of cases they can be young, easily manipulated individuals who want to earn quick cash. We see it with students, a lot of Chinese students here in the EU and beyond.
“We see very vulnerable people too. They need money to feed habits and they’re exploited by these OCGs. They might be paid £100 for their services, for someone to use their financial details and set up accounts.
“In other cases, we’ve seen migrants who have been smuggled from one country to another, they’re taken to set up accounts and brought back again. The recruitment of these individuals helps to circumvent detection by placing lots of small bets so it’s like smurfing (a money laundering technique). You don’t bet £10,000, you divide that out among 20 people. Then it’s 20 individual bets but then it comes back under the control of the one facilitator. That’s how they do it. That’s prevalent.”
That element of human trafficking is also seen internationally. The overlaps between criminal activity are common. Jason Moller, head of strategy and international policy at Sports Integrity Australia saw it first-hand.
“We certainly had one investigation where it actually was an organised crime trafficking investigation, and as part of the investigation, officers became aware of potential match-fixing,” he explains. “And that part of the investigation was referred to our (match-fixing) unit.”
Moller’s work has also felt the ripples from Asian markets and organised crime.
“Probably the most significant match-fixing investigation we’ve had in Australia was 2013, with a second-division football club called the Southern Stars,” he adds.
“Effectively, an organised crime syndicate based offshore used European and UK players to infiltrate a suburban club under the guise of sponsorship and free players. In actual fact, they wanted to fix matches week in, week out.
“We were proactively notified and they were actually able to allow fixed matches to take place whilst monitoring telephones and listening devices. The bidding was entirely in South East Asia.”
That is not to suggest that criminal gangs based in Europe are not making their own moves, often in cooperation with Asian groups. Business models are often found to be polycriminal, meaning they are networks involved in multiple criminal activities across borders.
“It can be labour exploitation, sexual exploitation,” Myles says. “Then those controllers have access to passports and documents where they can bring people to a country to set things up. It’s very easy for that organisation to then say, ‘OK, I have 20 bank accounts all open and ready to go’. They’ll then be almost sold to the other OCGs to use for passing money through. That’s what we see. Like betting mules, we have money mules.
“We’ve seen accounts that have money going through for arms trafficking, drugs trafficking, human trafficking, sports betting… the same accounts are being used by different OCGs.”
The ability to launder money collected through illicit means remains perhaps the most compelling reason for organised crime groups to hatch match-fixing plans. Dirty money is cleansed, recycled at a profit. It is, as Europol regards, a “relatively straightforward activity”.
“It’s the best way to launder money,” says Chris Kronow Rasmussen, a match-fixing expert and consultant. “They know the result. Often, if you launder, you accept you will lose some money, but here, you are not losing — you are winning.”
There can be a sinister undertone to match-fixing investigations to point towards layered operations. One of UEFA’s biggest match-fixing investigations surrounded the Albanian club Skenderbeu after it was ruled that more than 50 of its matches were found to have been manipulated for betting purposes. Not until 2027-28 will Skenderbeu be allowed to re-enter UEFA competitions following a 10-year ban.
An appeal heard at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) detailed that Sportsradar, the firm that works alongside UEFA, had been reticent to provide names of its analysts who had studied betting patterns after some had received death threats.
Four witnesses named “A”, “B”, “C” and “D” gave their evidence, via voice distortion, at a secure location in Lausanne.
Skenderbeu, through their appeal, contested what they thought to be a “fabricated story” that senior club officials had links with “betting companies and criminals”. CAS upheld the 10-year ban in 2019, calling UEFA’s decision “proportionate and justified”.
The Balkans region has proved problematic for UEFA. Macedonian side Pobeda was banned for eight years in 2009 before Arsenal Tivat of Montenegro was suspended by the European governing body for 10 years last summer, reduced to seven on appeal.
Three football clubs banned for lengthy periods but no criminal proceedings. That reality helps to explain the attraction through organised crime.
“In some cases involving a lot of countries, you might find some countries do not consider it a priority or a crime,” says Francisco Portugal from the Interpol Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre (IFCACC).
“There will be gaps because a country leading the investigation might not have cooperation from some countries. Even if there are laws, we have seen very low penalties for the players or organised criminal groups.”
Myles is in agreement. “You can always do more,” she says. “A lot of countries can do a lot more. Sanctions could be stronger. I do think it’s something UEFA are trying to improve.
“The bigger governing bodies are putting pressure on national oversight bodies but they can definitely squeeze more. If you have a player suspected of being involved in match-fixing but it doesn’t reach the level of a criminal sanction, you need strong suspensions. That sends a signal. If you have soft penalties, what’s the deterrent?”
Additional reporting Guillermo Rai and Jacob Whitehead
