Baltakos: “To unite our forces against the cancer of manipulation”

The work of the “Sport Integrity Week – Fighting manipulation in sport competitions” continues today (28/11) for the second day, with the president of the EPO, Panagiotis Baltakos to give the signal for the cooperation of all involved bodies.

“The manipulation of the result is a cancer for football. It is the greatest danger to the integrity of the games. Suspicion is on the rise and sports fans no longer believe anything they see. It is now necessary to join forces, all the federations, with the help of UEFA and the Council of Europe, in order to limit the phenomenon as much as possible. But everything we do here must reach a result. And the result is the imposition of a penalty“, said Mr. Baltakos in his speech, among other things, welcoming the invited countries (apart from Greece are Cyprus, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Malta, Romania, Georgia and Israel) and thanking UEFA for the efforts made so far for the suppression of the phenomenon of manipulated races.

Present from the Hellenic Football Federation were the Executive Director, Iakovos Philippoussisas well as the integrity officer of EPO, Dimitris Davakis.

During the second day of UEFA’s “Anti-Match-Fixing Regional Workshop” which is being held throughout the week we are in Athens and co-organised by the Council of Europe, the National Platform for Sports Integrity (E.P.ATHLA), the IOC , Interpol, UEFA and the EPO, UEFA integrity director Angelo Rigopoulos, UEFA information director Angela Celestino, UEFA integrity investigator Massimiliano Mikenzi and Sportradar integrity director Oliver Whitley were appointed.

The subject matter of their speeches was specialized and related to specific areas of action and dealing with the rings of manipulation, while best practices and challenges faced by each confederation were discussed in relation to investigations into fixed matches.