Ex-Mob Boss: Tennis Target for Fixes

Gambling influences top-level tennis matches, and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) has its work cut out for it if it wants to get rid of match-fixing in the sport, former Colombo boss Michael Franzese told Agence France Presse last week.

Franzese, a former boss in the Colombo crime family, serves as a consultant and speaker regarding his days with the mob and has spoken with ATP players about the methods that are used to spread corruption in sport.

"It's definitely going on," Franzese told AFP. "If I were in this business now, tennis would be my major target because one player can impact the game. That's all you need."

An FBI probe in the 1980s and a decade in prison helped push Franzese to change his ways and help those who safeguard the integrity of sport, but his crime contacts lead him to believe organized crime remains involved in tennis.

"I have to believe they are, certainly from the feedbacks I've gotten since I got involved with the ATP," Franzese said. "Sports has become such an incredibly lucrative racket, so to speak, for guys on the street."

Tennis's recent most high-profile match-fixing allegations involved a match between Russian Nikolay Davydenko and Argentinian Martin Vassallo-Arguello in August 2007. Large online sports betting exchange Betfair had warned the ATP that Betfair's security team had recognized irregular betting patterns during the match, from which Davydenko walked away citing injury with Vassallo ahead. The ATP cleared Davydenko of any wrongdoing in September 2008.

The ATP has created a number of rules in recent years and established an independent committee to investigate the sport in attempts to stamp out match-fixing. Hosts of the Australian Open, which opens later this month, have also said they are taking measures to protect the event from corruption.

Match fixing and other bad sport-related behavior isn't a problem just in tennis: Our project has recently released a series on malfeasance in East European football, which covers, inter alia, shell companies' roles in lucrative player transfers and organized crime infiltration of football teams in Ukraine and Bulgaria. (The Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo has also recently released a series on football problems in Bosnia-Herzegovina.) There's also an interview with the self-styled "King of the Football Mafia" – a Macedonian former footballer who served jail time in the old Yugoslavia for match-fixing. Velibor Dzarovski "Dzaro" had this to say about the sad state of Macedonian football:

Džaro: Macedonia is a black spot in Europe. … Macedonian and Albanian matches are the only ones that aren't represented in any betting shop in Europe [because they are assumed to be fixed]. One time we managed to get on a Norwegian betting web site, but once they found out how things are here, the Macedonian league was out.

Macedonia Official: No Organized Crime

After the interview with Dzaro – which detailed how football players can be pressured into throwing matches – was published, Macedonia's chief prosecutor told the press there that head prosecutors who observe the law can be completely above any pressure from politicians or political parties or any other groups.

Asked whether he is afraid of a possible revenge, (Jovan) Ilievski said there was no organized crime in Macedonia.

"We are a small country and it is easy to control the territory," the prosecutor added.

German Minister Asks Swiss Help

The tiny tax haven principality of Liechtenstein and the larger tax haven state of Switzerland should be helping the German authorities fight tax fraud, German finance minister Peer Steinbrueck was reported saying in Bloomberg last week.

Liechtenstein agreed to help crack down on American tax evaders last month, and a US Senate committee investigated tax avoidance by clients of Liechtenstein and Swiss banks. The Germans
are wondering why they can't get either country to open up.

Swiss officials say they collect withholding tax and pass it on to Germany without naming anyone. That's a "joke" against the background of an estimated 300 billion euros in Swiss bank accounts owned by German taxpayers, Steinbrueck said.

Italy Mob News

Italian police ended 2008 on a high note with the arrest of a Calabrian mafia figure who'd been on the run for more than 10 years. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni described the capture of Pietro Criaco – sentenced in 1997 to 19 years for attempted murder and his links to the 'Ndrangheta – as "one of the most important of 2008."

In La Cosa Nostra news, victims of the Sicilian mob were outraged last week when an Italian newspaper reported that several of the mob's jailed bosses had thousands of fans on the networking and time-sucking website Facebook.

The fan sites offer tributes not only to Salvatore (Toto) Riina, jailed in 1993, and Bernardo Provenzano, his successor, arrested two years ago, both from Corleone, but also to Matteo Messina Denaro, the Mafia boss from Trapani in Sicily who is said to be the current capo dei capi (boss of bosses).

Maria Falcone, the sister of Giovanni Falcone, the respected anti Mafia judge murdered in 1992, said she was outraged. "Unfortunately, evil still fascinates our young people" she said.

One fan page devoted to Riina, whose other nickname is "The Beast" and who is serving 12 life sentences for murder, has more than 2,000 fans, many of whom sent messages wishing him Merry Christmas.

And as the anti-mafia film "Gomorrah" continues to garner praise worldwide, the filmgoing public can expect more films of this type from Italy, reported entertainment news publication Variety last week. Among those on offer: a true tale of a reporter murdered by the Neapolitan Camorra syndicate, a documentary on the families of the innocent victims killed by the mob and the true story of a La Cosa Nostra daughter who became a police informant and later took her own life.

Global corruption round-up

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon may have pledged to clean up the country's corrupt police forces when he came into office two years ago, but the results have been a mixed bag, reported the Christian Science Monitor last week. Events such as Operation Clean House, which netted more than one dozen senior policemen – including an organized crime cop who was charged with giving intelligence to drug traffickers and receiving nearly half a million dollars for his trouble – may not be getting at the roots of police corruption, said sources. Something must be going right in Mexico, however, according to the US's Drug Enforcement Agency: Though drug-related murders there more than doubled in 2008 (more than 5,000 murders last year and expected to rise), something along the cocaine chain to the US has been disrupted, as the DEA reported last week that the price of cocaine has gone up 89 percent in the past year, with a gram now costing $183. Meanwhile, the relationship between the US – which has pledged money and equipment to fight the drugs scourge – and Mexico has traditionally been fraught by so much mistrust, neglect and lack of collaboration that the anti-drug efforts must be built up from scratch, reported the LA Times last week.

In China, officials receive an annual New Year message from the Party, warning them about bribery and corruption. Last year it warned about sightseeing trips paid for out of the public purse. This year the message focused on dodgy business deals, reported the International Herald Tribune. Nearly 151,000 Chinese officials were sanctioned for corruption and/or bribery last year.

In Afghanistan, the New York Times reported last week, absolutely no transaction is free from corruption and the government is rapidly losing credibility because of it.

Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.

A raft of investigations has concluded that people at the highest levels of the Karzai administration, including President Karzai's own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, are cooperating in the country's opium trade, now the world's largest. In the streets and government offices, hardly a public transaction seems to unfold here that does not carry with it the requirement of a bribe, a gift, or, in case you are a beggar, "harchee" — whatever you have in your pocket.

The corruption, publicly acknowledged by President Karzai, is contributing to the collapse of public confidence in his government and to the resurgence of the Taliban, whose fighters have moved to the outskirts of Kabul, the capital