Thirteen individuals, including ten referees, have been banned by Uganda’s Football Federation (FUFA) for their roles in a South African-based match-fixing syndicate which was unearthed with the support of FIFA. The others are a footballer and two administrators.
About seven games across the country’s lower divisions of men’s and women’s football were reportedly targeted by the fixing ring between October and December last year.
A member of FUFA’s investigation team, Charles Twine said “We received a lot of information from intelligence, collaborators and different platforms that there was a vice of match-fixing in Uganda”.
He said the Federation, which launched an anti-match-fixing campaign in March 2023, has “incontrovertible” evidence against those involved in the fixing ring.
“I can comfortably call it a criminal syndicate because match-fixing is associated with so many crimes – crimes of corruption, money laundering and, sometimes, organised crime,” he added.
The syndicates usually target matches in the lower rungs, given the lack of television cameras, which could expose any fixing.
Match-fixing became a criminal offence last year in Uganda after President Yoweri Museveni signed the National Sports Act, which criminalised match-fixing, into law.
In a previous case, world governing body FIFA issued global five-year bans to five players, including three from top-flight side Gaddafi FC, and 10-year suspensions to two referees from Uganda. FUFA suspended the seven individuals in August 2023.
FUFA said one of the suspects was an ex-convict who was sentenced for financial-related crimes in the Virgin Islands.