Handball’s world governing body said on Friday it would investigate claims of match-fixing in European tournaments after a German official said the sport faced “a massive corruption problem.”
Hassan Moustafa, the Egyptian president of the International Handball Federation (IHF), said his organization would look into the allegations.
The European Handball Federation (EHF) said earlier on Friday it had started an investigation into allegations that center on the 2006 men’s Cup Winners Cup final between Russia’s Chehovski Medvedi and BM Valladolid of Spain, plus at least two other matches. Medvedi won the two-game series by one goal.
“There seems to be a massive corruption problem,” German handball league managing director Frank Bohmann said.
German referees Frank Lemme and Bernd Ullrich, who officiated the 2006 final, have confirmed media reports in Germany that US$50,000 in cash was found in their luggage by Russian customs officials as they were preparing to leave Moscow after the match.
They have been suspended after acknowledging the find, although they have denied any wrongdoing. They said they never reported the incident because they thought nobody would believe them. Both say they don’t know how the bag of money found its way into the luggage and say they believe they had been set up.
Moustafa said the head of the IHF’s referee commission, Christer Ahl, would set up a “neutral commission” to investigate whether “intentional mistakes were made or not.”
The EHF is appointing a three-member panel to look into the match and two other games, a World Championship qualifying game between Romania and Montenegro last June and a women’s Champions League match in Togliatti, Russia, back in January 2006.
Juergen Rieber, one of the two German referees who officiated the match in Togliatti against Slagelse DT of Denmark, told German media he and his colleague were offered first US$10,000 and then US$20,000 to referee in the Russians’ favor. He said the offers were made on written notes passed in a toilet.
Rieber said the EHF officials at the game were told about the incident, but apparently never did anything about it.
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