November 17 – CONCACAF director of sports integrity Dr Laila Mintas (pictured) is leaving the confederation. Mintas, one of the world’s most experienced experts in the battle against match-fixing, set up the integrity department in probably the world’s most challenged confederation when it comes to integrity.
Match-fixing had been the biggest issue facing the integrity of the game in the CONCACAF region until the bribery and corruption scandal that engulfed the region and lead to the arrest of president Jeff Webb and Costa Rican FA president Eduardo Li, and the firing of general secretary Enrique Sanz earlier this year.
At the end of 2013 worldwide lifetime bans were imposed on 22 national Salvadorian team players in what has been the biggest international match-fixing scandal to date. Federation investigations uncovered match manipulation that occurred in international matches, including friendlies and CONCACAF Gold Cup matches in 2010. What is more concerning for the global football community is that El Salvador is a country that does not have a big betting culture.
There is almost no market in Central America that match-fixers do not operate in, while fraud monitoring systems also point to major issues of match manipulation in the US in college sports in particular, though not in football.
The US Justice authorities have been remarkably slow to pursue this threat to sport integrity though via Mintas, CONCACAF has established a network of 45 INTERPOL certificated Integrity Officers across the region to support member associations with their national integrity programmes.
While at CONCACAF, Mintas developed the Sports Integrity Initiative which consists of different measures to protect football in the region. So far this has included the CONCACAF Code of Ethics; training workshops together with INTERPOL and FIFA; establishment of an awareness programmes for member associations regarding their national need to implement laws that make match-manipulation a crime; establishment of an efficient network of Single Point of Contacts for Integrity (SPOCs) within all member associations to coordinate the measures against match-manipulation within the CONCACAF region as well as to facilitate the fast and smooth transfer and exchange of information; a workshop programme that has provided training for more than 4,500 players and officials to date; the creation and implementation of eLearning Tools; and Competition Integrity Measures to take place before every CONCACAF tournament.
CONCACAF will now move its integrity operations from the Cayman Islands, where Mintas was based, to Miami where a new integrity chief will be recruited.
“After two years of intensive work and establishing the Sports Integrity Program, the foundation is laid for CONCACAF to successfully continue its fight against match-manipulation and other sports integrity issues with zero tolerance. My task is done now and therefore I leave with a good feeling. For me it’s now time to take up new challenges,” she said.
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