15Apr

Tim Donaghy former Mob-Linked NBA Referee to speak at Launch of University of New Haven’s Graduate Certificate in Sports Integrity

Zoom Presentation, Wednesday, April 22nd - 18.30 pm (EST) “I was slowly learning that NBA referees had their own way of officiating a professional basketball game…” Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy will be delivering the first annual sports integrity address for the Investigations Program, University of New Haven. This event will launch the Sports Integrity Graduate Certificate. Tim Donaghy is one of the most controversial figures in the history of the National Basketball Association. A former top referee who was working with...

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23Mar

Covid-19… Now for the Really Bad News

There are more - far more - viruses, like Covid-19 out there. That is the view from the scientific literature that - like many of the things during this crazy time - is really terrifying. One article tells of a group of dedicated Chinese researchers in the provinces around Wuhan discovering thousands of similar viruses. A few of these viruses are potentially as or more harmful to humans than the Covid-19. If unchecked, the...

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17Feb

One of our Greats is Gone…

Harry Gregg is dead. Gregg was the best Manchester United player ever. He was the best, not because of his considerable playing skills, but because he was the hero of the Munich Air Crash. He ran back to the burning plane and pulled out the wounded before a massive explosion blew it up. He was a comrade, who corresponded with me for years. He was an inspiration for sheer courage and his indomitable moral...

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05Nov

Strategic Deception and the Sporting World

How the UNODC and IOC have created a movement that purports to fight sports corruption but actually puts it in reverse. ”The West are wishful thinkers, we will give them what they want to think…” Feliks Dzerzhinsky - Founder of the Soviet Spy Services Back in the day, things were not going well for the Russian Bolsheviks. It was 1919, they were nominally in power in the newly established, Soviet Russia, but really were losing a land war to their bitter enemies...

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16Oct

How to Survive an International Sports Integrity Conference

You ain’t in Kansas anymore Dorothy. Back in the day, international sports integrity conferences - like Play the Game, happening right now in Colorado Springs - were jovial affairs where independent journalists, saddened whistle-blowers and beleaguered sports officials could meet, chat, drink and sometimes dance. Now, everything has changed. Sports are battle grounds of geopolitical soft power. Hard power is the idea that you can conquer another country with tanks, planes and lots of death. Soft power is the idea that you can...

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10Oct

The Worst Mass Murderers in History & the NBA

  They are the worst mass murderers in the history of humanity and they have chosen to face down the National Basketball Association (NBA). If you missed this week’s foreboding story of communist Chinese taking umbrage at a seven-word tweet by a relatively unknown (by international standards) NBA manager, this is what happened. Daryl Morey is the intelligent, maverick general manager of the Houston Rockets. He tweets about a range of subjects, mostly basketball but ranging to speed chess and jokes about...

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16Aug

’Sometimes we fixed more games than we could bet’

In an exclusive interview with Play the Game, a former match-fixer tells how effectively criminal syndicates are still manipulating sports results despite all initiatives against it. The whole approach against match-fixing could be wrong, Declan Hill reports.  This was first printed at: https://www.playthegame.org/news/news-articles/2019/0584_sometimes-we-fixed-more-games-than-we-could-bet/ ** The knock came late at night. Marko Stanovic – whose name has been changed to help protect him from the mob – was in one of the world’s great match-fixing gangs. A group whose criminal ties stretched deep...

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31Jul

Red Mafia & Black Mafia: Asian Police-Political Theater and Sports Gambling

There are two events occurring in Asia that show the close links between organized crime and top government officials. 

The first is in Hong Kong. The territory - nominally, an independent part of China under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ agreement hammered out with the departing Brits in 1997, is in the grip of a series of demonstrations protesting new legislation allowing the extradition of criminal suspects to China. The demonstrations were mostly peaceful until organized crime (the Triads) got...

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19Jul

Beauty, Chaos and Tales of Match-Fixing at the Africa Cup of Nations

For those who have not been following the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON 2019), it has been a classic example of the beauty and chaos of Africa’s football world. “In French football you know that 10% of the money will disappear, in African football it is 90%” Joseph Antoine Bell, ex-Cameroon, Olympique de Marseille and Girondins de Bordeaux goalkeeper. Beauty in the extraordinary talent and athleticism of the players. Given their abilities and the capacity of many of the indigenous coaches (try...

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11Jul

Sex as the Coin of Corruption

Its not about sex. You might think that it was all about sex if you read many of the articles on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Epstein is the wealthy New Yorker financier indicted for sexual trafficking of potentially hundreds of underage girls.  The media is full of salacious stories presented in an ‘Evils-of-Pornography-we-bring-you-a-26-part-special-investigation’ style. These stories feature tales of massages, recruitment of other teenagers and lots of bodily parts. All of these stories spectacularly miss the point. This case is...

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