Sport fighting organised crime, says WADA

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davidhowman

Cricket, athletics and football are among the sports to have fallen foul of organised crime due to issues such as spot-fixing, doping violations and betting irregularities.

And, speaking at the Securing Sport 2014 conference in London, WADA director-general David Howman called on sports to work together to eradicate their problems. 

"The biggest threat to sport is organised crime," Howman commented.

"Let's not compartmentalise it into match-fixing or bribery, it's organised crime and I think, now, organised crime controls at least 25 per cent of world sport, in one way or another. 

"Those guys who are distributing drugs, steroids, HGH [Human Growth Hormone], EPO's [Erythropoietin, a performance enhancing drugs] and so on, are the same guys who are corrupting people, the same guys who are paying money to people to fix games. 

"Now, the good guys have to prevail. 

"Who are the good guys? Let's get them together and make sure they can work out a plan, because otherwise the bad guys are going to win."

European football's governing body UEFA has moved to end financial irregularities by implementing their Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules, and Andrea Traverso, head of FFP at the organisation, believes this will help clean up the sport.

"If football clubs are run according to sustainable business models, then we would achieve situations where illegal practices, such as money laundering, illegal betting, or match-fixing would find a much less breeding ground for their development," he said.

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