J.O Lamptey: FIFA, CAS confirm Ghana ref’s ban on betting lines
World football governing body, FIFA has officially confirmed that banned Ghanaian referee Joseph Odartei Lamptey has been “found guilty of taking intentional decisions with the sole purpose of facilitating a minimum number of goals in order to make certain bets successful” during the World Cup qualifier between South African and Senegal in November 2016.
The Fifa Disciplinary Committee imposed the lifetime ban on referee Lamptey in March last year following investigative reports from its fraud detection partners Sportradar and Early Warning System (EWS).
Extracts from an appeal ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sports indicated:
“On 14 November 2016, the betting monitoring company Sportradar Integrity Services sent an “Escalation Report” to FIFA containing the following evaluation:
“There is a clear and overwhelming betting evidence that the course or result of the match was unduly influenced. The betting evidence ultimately indicated that bettors held prior knowledge of at least three goals being scored in total.”
On the same date, Early Warning System also provided FIFA with an alert that it detected irregular betting patterns during the match.”
Click to read the CAS ruling in full here.
A statement by Fifa Monday reads:
FIFA has taken note of the motivated arbitral award of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) confirming the lifetime ban imposed by FIFA’s Disciplinary and Appeal Committees on Ghanaian match official Joseph Odartei Lamptey.
FIFA’s judicial bodies had banned Mr Lamptey for life for breaching art. 69 par 1 (unlawfully influencing match results) of the FIFA Disciplinary Code during the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia™ qualifying match between South Africa and Senegal on 12 November 2016.
In its ruling, CAS concluded that Mr Lamptey had intentionally taken two wrong decisions with the sole purpose of enabling a specific number of goals to be scored that would make pertinent bets successful. CAS concluded that there was an obvious link between these intentionally wrong decisions and a deviation from an expected betting pattern and consequently found Mr Lamptey guilty of having unlawfully influenced the result of the match.
This CAS decision underlines FIFA’s commitment to protecting the integrity of football and its zero-tolerance policy on match manipulation, while also highlighting the effectiveness of its current agreement with Sportradar that uses their Fraud Detection System, which played an important role in this case.
