Football Association of Malawi (Fam) has bemoaned the existence of cartels in football that thrive on fixing matches saying it is a threat to the integrity of the beautiful game.
Fam president Walter Nyamilandu made the remarks during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) held in Nkhata-Bay last week.
“I need to say that we know that there are cartels in football that thrive on fixing matches. Some of those that drive these cartels are among us here, serving the game of football with no intentions of advancing the game. This immoral conduct must stop. It is detrimental to football because it discourages investors and frustrates players and officials alike,’’ Nyamilandu said.
Nyamilandu appealed to whistle blowers to keep reporting incidents to law enforcement agencies for further investigations.
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“As the FA, we condemn malpractices of match fixing, bribery and corruption in the strongest sense,” he said.
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Early this year, Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) in conjunction with Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) organised a workshop for sports administrators.
During the workshop, the ACB promised that corruption and bribery cases will be investigated to their logical conclusion.
Several cases including match fixing concerns have been reported to ACB in the last five years.
Apart from match fixing, Nyamilandu also bemoaned the failure of the E-ticketing project saying other people are deliberately frustrating the project.
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“Our biggest enemy is ourselves who continue to serve football with divergent interests that serve our personal interests rather than for the common good. It is for the same reasons that e-ticketing has failed to take-off smoothly where bad elements want to profiteer from gate takings by sabotaging the process,’’ he said.
Council Public Relations and Communications Officer Edgar Ntulumbwa said they are aware that cartels exist in domestic football hence fuelling gate fraud and corruption.
“We established a committee to come up with findings and recommendations on gate fraud and one of the findings was that the people that are involved in gate fraud and corruption are the top football administrators.
“The report findings in Blantyre Council recommend for e-ticketing in order to end the vice, apart from that as council we also have an Institution Integrity Committee (IIC) which is working hand in hand with ACB in order to fight,” he said.
Sports analyst George Kauza Masina said it was unfortunate that local football has been captured by mafias.
“Unfortunately, these allegations are difficult to approve of underhand deals done in the dark corners. It has to be appreciated that football is about fair play and games have to be won fairly all the time,” he said.
