Report on 2006 World Cup ‘bribery’ Mar. 4

BERLIN — The German football federation (DFB) says the findings of an internal investigation into bribery allegations concerning the awarding of the 2006 World Cup will be published on March 4. The DFB says in a statement that law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, which it tasked with a "comprehensive investigation of all allegations" will present its report to its 45-member committee and then at a press conference the same day. The findings will also be made available online. The DFB says it will not comment on media reports beforehand but will "carry out an assessment as soon as the report is complete." Allegations that Germany's World Cup organizing committee may have bought votes to secure the awarding of the 2006 tournament were first made by Der Spiegel magazine last October. AFC bolsters match-fixing fight The Asian Football Confederation will monitor 4,500 matches for corruption under an extended partnership agreement with a British-based betting fraud prevention and detection firm announced Thursday. Illegal betting syndicates in Asia have plagued several sports, notably cricket, while Singapore has been a recognized center for football match-fixing. The AFC first joined forces with Sportradar in 2013 to monitor its tournaments but the new agreement, launched in Doha, will also cover the top professional leagues in each of its 47 member associations. In addition, prominent continental and regional tournaments will also be monitored by the specially designed AFC Monitoring System (AMS), with 4,500 matches across Asia each year coming under its remit. Sportradar spokesman Alex Inglot said the system relied on a combination of mathematical and human intelligence. "The first part is the technology and an algorithm we have developed which filters through five billion data sets every day from 450 betting operations around the world — legal and illegal, Europe and Asia, betting exchanges and national lotteries," Inglot told AFP. "We split a market into pre-match and live betting. In the pre-match market we are looking for anomalies and unexpected movements in the odds; in the live market we look for deviations from what our system expects. "The second phase is that we have 35 expert analysts split between London, Hong Kong and Sydney whose job is to put into context those anomalies and movements in a market. They come from different parts of the betting and sports industries." Inglot added: "We also have 150 freelance journalists around the world adding extra details. "Last year we monitored 65,000 matches in 11 different sports." Among the federations who work with Sportradar are the International Cricket Council and the England and Wales Cricket Board, World Rugby and the New Zealand Rugby Football Union, as well as football's UEFA and CONCACAF. "Our reports have launched and supported over a hundred successful sporting sanctions and over 170 arrests," said Inglot.