On Tuesday, Copenhagen City Court convicted a Danish national of aggravated fraud in relation to two football matches played in the second tier of Danish football, the 1st Division, in 2010, but acquitted his accomplice. The court said that the convicted man was accused of placing DKK170,000 (€22,800) and DKK200,000 (€26,800) on the matches in collusion with five others, four of which are understood to be former Hvidovre IF football players, according to Politiken. This earned them almost 900,000 krone (€120,600). The court said that in the first match, the accused had agreed with a number of players to concede at least four goals, resulting in a 4-2 loss. In the second match, which was lost 5-0, the court said it had been agreed that the team would lose by at least two goals. The second defendant in the case was acquitted due to ‘lack of evidence’.

The Danish football association (DBU) confirmed that the case had been immediately appealed to the High Court, and said that it may consider adjusting its own match-fixing protocols as a result of the judgment. “We will, of course, study carefully the grounds for the judgment so that we can assess whether there is a need to adjust to the new rules, adopted in 2014 and the new legislation from April”, said DBU President Jesper Møller in a statement. “There is also a need to follow up on the judgment’s conclusions”. The DBU said that it would study the case file to see if it needed to take any further action, either through its own regulatory system, or through a new match-fixing board, which was established in partnership with the Danish Olympic committee (DIF) last year. ‘The assessment will take into account that the so-called Hvidovre case took place in 2010, and thus before the DBU introduced, amongst other rules, a prohibition on players gambling on their own games’, continued the DBU statement.

The DBU statement that the case further highlighted that new legislation introduced to criminalise match-fixing do not go far enough, and that more resources for police and greater collaboration between sporting organisations is needed. “The question now is whether we have got the right line-up in the on-going fight against match-fixing”, said Møller. “The DBU believes that the new law is an important first step, but that much remains for it to become effective. The law leaves some important questions unanswered.” The DBU was critical of the government Bill when it was introduced in January this year.

Politiken reported that the convicted man, who cannot be named but is referred to at MT, is 28-years old. It is understood that the court sentenced MT to one year’s imprisonment which, under an amendment to the Criminal Code which entered into force on 1 May 2015, was converted to a suspended prison sentence conditional on the completion of 200 hours of community service. The DBU’s statement said that the convicted man was also ordered to repay DKK130,000 kroner (€17,400). Chief Prosecutor for the Copenhagen Police, Per Justesen, told Politiken that the conviction could form the basis for new cases against the five other defendants. The Danish newspaper reported that MT had initially confessed during interrogation by the police, but had since withdrawn his confession and hence was appealing to the High Court. The paper reported that MT’s defence lawyer, Henrik Juel Halberg, believed that the evidence had been wrongly judged, and that MT had made his confession at a time when he feared for his safety and would never have been convicted if he had not felt pressured to deliver what the police demanded in exchange for protection.