Author Archives: Ubong Udoeyo

Major League Soccer: A Prime Target for Organized Crime Groups?

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Sports corruption, though not a new problem, has been an ever-increasing source of concern and attention in both the sporting world and the anticorruption community. In the United States, much of the attention regarding this issue has focused on corruption scandals in the most popular U.S. sports, such as college football, college basketball, and professional basketball. But other less high-profile sports may be even more at risk of corruption. Indeed, in surveying the landscape of sports in America, the league that stands out as very high-risk for corruption is Major League Soccer (MLS).

This may seem surprising. Although soccer is considered to be the most corrupt sport in the world, there have not, to my knowledge, been any reports of significant corruption in MLS to date. Indeed, back in 2015 MLS commissioner Don Garber declared that MLS is “one hundred thousand percent” clean. But just because corruption hasn’t (yet) been uncovered doesn’t mean it isn’t there, or that it won’t arise in the future. My concerns for corruption in the MLS arises from my observation that MLS has several of the risk factors that investigations of sports corruption in other contexts have identified. Three such risk factors in particular stand out:

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eSports: A Playground for Corruption?

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Video game tournaments—sometimes referred to as “eSports”—are relatively new but increasingly popular. In these tournaments, players compete for cash prizes. In certain U.S. states it is now legal to place bets on eSports tournaments, though in other states such betting is prohibited. The growing popularity of eSports and the rise of eSports betting unfortunately gives rise to the risks of the same sorts of corruption that we have seen in traditional sports, such as gamblers (including organized criminal betting syndicates) bribing players to fix matches. And this is not purely hypothetical: Recently the FBI obtained evidence that criminal betting syndicates were bribing a group of players to throw matches in certain eSports competitions.

Responding effectively to bribery-related corruption in eSports is complicated by the fact that, unlike traditional sporting leagues, eSports do not have a central governing body. Rather, each game publisher controls its own tournaments, and many tournament operators have not taken the steps necessary to implement effective mechanisms for identifying betting-related match-fixing activities and levying punishment on bad actors. In 2016, a group of eSports stakeholders tried to address this issue by establishing a nonprofit association called the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC), which is tasked with investigating and disciplining individuals involved in corrupt eSports activities. But ESIC only has authority over competitions organized by its members, and players sanctioned for match-fixing activities within an ESIC member tournament can still compete in non-ESIC member competitions.

More effective measures are therefore needed to prevent the spread of corruption in eSports. In particular, those states that permit betting on eSports tournaments should require, as a condition for betting on such matches to be lawful, that the tournament and betting operators join an authorized eSports governing board equivalent to the ESIC. Authorized governing boards should have the following responsibilities and obligations:

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The Perils of Over-Criminalizing Sports Corruption

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Although the fight against corruption has traditionally focused on corruption in government, the anticorruption community has started to pay more attention to corruption in other spheres. One particularly prominent concern is corruption in sports (see here, here, and here). The topic of sports-related corruption includes not only corruption in the major sports associations (think FIFA and the International Olympic Committee), but also the corrupt manipulation of individual sporting events in order to win bets (whether legal or illegal). Such corrupt manipulation includes match-fixing (where corrupt actors fraudulently influence the outcome of a game); spot-fixing (where wrongdoers seek to influence events within the game that do not necessarily have a significant effect on the final outcome, such as the number of minutes an athlete plays or timing the first throw-in or corner in a soccer game); and point-shaving (where perpetrators seek to hold down the margin of victory in order to avoid covering a published point spread).

Different jurisdictions approach this sort of sports corruption differently. Many countries in Europe have enacted blanket laws criminalizing match-fixing in order to uphold the integrity of sports. The United States, by contrast, takes a narrower approach: The relevant criminal laws targeting sports corruption in the U.S.—both the Federal Sports Bribery Act (the “Act”) and comparable laws at the state level—focus solely on bribery. Furthermore, the Act has historically been used to prosecute individuals involved in paying bribes or inducing others to collect bribes, but not the people (usually athletes, coaches, or officials) who receive the bribes. Although a great deal of corruption in sports involves the payment of bribes, and would therefore be covered by these laws, some types of sports corruption are unilateral: An athlete or sports official may place bets on sporting events and subsequently undertake behavior to win those bets. For this reason, some scholars have argued that the U.S. should close this loophole by criminalizing such unilateral conduct as well.

I disagree. To be sure, unilateral sports corruption is unethical, and criminalizing it would help to prevent athletes, referees, and coaches from engaging in corrupt acts that jeopardize the integrity of sports. But the benefits of criminalizing this form of misconduct are minimal and are greatly outweighed by the corresponding costs.

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Fighting Corruption in Nigeria’s Forestry and Fishery Industries

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Although Nigeria is known mainly for oil and gas production, Nigeria’s agriculture sector, including forestry and fisheries, now accounts for over 21% of the country’s GDP. Despite the benefits of the forestry and fisheries industries to Nigeria’s development, corruption-fueled illicit activities in these sectors threaten to destabilize local communities and damage the environment. Two areas of illicit activity are of particular concern:

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Nigeria’s Government Assistance Programs for Small Businesses: A Gateway for Corruption

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Nigeria’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the country’s economy, accounting for 96% of Nigeria’s businesses, 84% of its labor force, and 48% of its GDP. SMEs also provide Nigeria’s oil-dependent economy with some important economic diversification. Nevertheless, difficulties in securing startup or operational funds, among other problems, makes starting and operating a small business in Nigeria remarkably challenging. To mitigate these difficulties, the Nigerian federal government has created an assortment of agencies to support SMEs. In addition, at least 26 of Nigeria’s 36 state governments have established at least one SME development agency or office.

Unfortunately, government funds meant to help small businesses often fail to reach their intended recipients. Instead, the government’s SME programs often function as gateways for corruption, either in the form of misallocation of resources for political patronage, or as outright embezzlement of funds. This corruption problem is well illustrated by two of the most important national-level government programs meant to support Nigerian SMEs:

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Fighting Police Corruption in Nigeria: Learning from SARS’ Alleged Dissolution

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In 1992, the Nigerian police force created the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) to combat violent crimes such as armed robbery, kidnapping, murder, and hired assassination. In each state, SARS operates under the criminal investigations department of the state’s police command. Alas, SARS developed a reputation for corruptly extorting money from the targets of its investigations. To offer one example, a local software engineer alleged that heavily-armed SARS officers stopped him and ordered that he withdraw one million Naira (approx. $2,607.56 USD) for his release. Such allegations are not unusual, as demonstrated by an online Twitter campaign, labeled #EndSARS, in which numerous Nigerians recounted their personal experiences with SARS. These allegations were serious enough that the Inspector General of Police (IGP) recently released an order to dissolve SARS altogether.

One might reasonably suppose that this dissolution order will result in the elimination of SARS and the corrupt practices that pervaded its department. However, such conclusion would be incorrect, or at least premature, for a couple of reasons. First, the dissolution may turn out to be little more than a publicity gambit that does not have lasting effect. This most recent order is actually the fourth IGP order in four years that has sought to restrict, reorganize, or ban SARS’ operations. In the previous three directives the restrictions were not implemented, and the current order may not be either. Second, even if SARS is dissolved, the root causes of the corruption that pervaded its units are not unique to SARS. If left unaddressed, those same underlying causes can be expected to give rise to similar sorts of extortive corruption in other police units.

So, what factors contributed to the widespread corrupt practices within SARS? Part of the problem may be general systematic inadequacies—factors that contribute to corruption throughout the Nigerian government—but we can also identify three specific factors that made SARS particularly prone to extortive corruption. Continue reading →