At least three Champions League games and around 200 football matches in nine European countries are implicated in a new match-fixing scandal, reported by German prosecutors on last Friday.
The suspect matches took place in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Austria, netting criminals several million euros (dollars) in betting profits, prosecutors believe.
They include 12 matches this season from the Europa League, formerly known as the UEFA Cup, one qualifying game for the under-21 European championship and four from the German second division.
Harald Stenger, a spokesman for the German Football Federation (DFB), said: "As far as the DFB knows, no German matches are affected."
But the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported that one of the games being scrutinised was a friendly between German side SSV Ulm against Fenerbahce Istanbul in July. The Turkish side won 5-0, and investigators suspect that "certain currently unidentified SSV Ulm players" received more than 10,000 euros (14,900 dollars) to throw the game, the paper said.
Reports also said that the ring was believed to have placed enormous bets with Asian bookmakers, where limits on the sums that punters can gamble as as much as 30,000 euros (45,000 dollars), much higher than in Europe.
The 2004 German scandal saw referee Robert Hoyzer sentenced to two years and five months behind bars after admitting receiving almost 70,000 euros (104,000 dollars) and a plasma television from a Croatian mafia ring to throw games.
The matches concerned were mainly in the German second and third division, but a German Cup match between first division SV Hamburg and third division Paderborn and a first division match in Turkey were also affected. Hoyzer was released after serving half of his sentence.
Europe Football rocked by fresh match-fixing scandal
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