Cryptocurrencies play in favor of sports fixing

The president of Huesca, Agustín Lasaosa, together with a police officer as he left the club's offices after being arrested in May 2018 during Operation Oikos. Javier Blasco (EFE)

Operation Oikos, carried out in May 2019, was a true earthquake in the world of Spanish professional football.

For the first time, the shadow of match-fixing for bets splashed across the First Division.

Today, almost three years later, the case is still open in a court in Huesca trying to overcome the difficulties involved in ramifications abroad, encrypted telephone messages and the imperceptible trail left by the transfer of money that moves clandestinely.

Of the successes and errors of both that police operation —the most mediatic—, as well as others, such as the so-called Bitures, which uncovered the fixing of tennis matches,

The teachings that 30 agents of the National Police will receive on May 4 and 5 emerge, whom the Ministry of the Interior wants to train in the face of new forms of corruption in sport.

"With these conferences, it is intended that the different sectors involved in the fight against match-fixing in sport share experiences and initiatives," explain sources from the General Directorate of the Police.

During the course, in which jurists, experts in the world of betting and LaLiga officials will participate, there will be a section dedicated to the growing use of cryptocurrencies by these plots.

Iñaki Arbea, a police officer on leave of absence who participated, in 2015, in the investigation of

, which brought illegal premiums in Spanish football to court for the first time and who is currently responsible for Integrity at LaLiga, will focus on them in part of your intervention.

"Cryptocurrencies have become a simple instrument for laundering the proceeds of illegal bets because they make it difficult to follow the trail of money," says Arbea, who will also warn about the proliferation of unregulated gaming platforms on the internet.

The representative of LaLiga recalls that the proximity of the end of official competitions (when many teams are no longer at stake and there is a risk that footballers will lend themselves to these frauds) and the upcoming celebration of a World Cup increase the risk of match-fixing .

In these cases, Arbea insists on the need to intensify international collaboration, embodied in operations such as Interpol's Soga, whose eighth phase, carried out last September in 28 countries, resulted in 1,400 detainees, 800 of them in Hong Kong.

"It's a global problem," he insists.

According to the call for the course, to which EL PAÍS has had access, agents of all levels and categories of the National Police who meet a requirement may aspire to one of the 30 positions: that they currently perform, precisely, investigative functions related to sports corruption.

Currently, the epicenter of police investigations against fraud in sports is the National Police Center for Integrity in Sports and Betting (Cenpida).

Judge Fermín Otamendi, responsible for investigating the

, although his assistance has not yet been confirmed.

From the investigation of this magistrate, a court of the Provincial Court of Pamplona sentenced nine people, including two soccer players.

The ruling concluded that the so-called bonuses to third parties, with which some teams encourage others to win in their clashes with other clubs, are illegal for influencing the competition.

From the legal field, a member of the LaLiga legal team will also intervene, who appears as an accusation in all the summaries that are opened for corruption that affect football, both professional and amateur.

"It will explain to the agents the vicissitudes that judicial investigations face," they point out from La Liga.

A representative of the General Directorate for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ), dependent on the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, will also participate.

The DGOJ is in charge of "ensuring the integrity, security, reliability and transparency of gaming operations" and for this it has, since 2017, the so-called Global Betting Market Research Service (Sigma), in charge of collaborating with the Security Forces and other entities in the prevention and detection of match-fixing.

Last year, Sigma carried out 440 actions, of which 146 were related to the integrity of sports competitions.

Of these, 88 had to do with soccer;

23, with table tennis and 13, with tennis, the three sports that accumulate 89% of the files.

The private company will also be present.

Internet gaming operators will be represented by the JDigital employers' association and its general director, Jorge Hinojosa.

"Neither sports nor operators are interested in unauthorized practices," says Hinojosa, who also focuses on cryptocurrencies: "We still need to learn more about these products and work on their regulation."

In addition, a member of Stast Perform, a company dedicated to the analysis of large amounts of sports data that works for professional leagues, the media and bookmakers, is expected to participate.

The encrypted phones that jammed Operation Oikos

The person in charge of Integrity of the Professional Football League, Iñaki Arbea, one of the participants in the course, highlights that the plots that are dedicated to match-fixing and sports betting fraud are usually criminal groups that, on many occasions, they participate in other illegal activities, mainly money laundering.

“And, as is always the case in organized crime, they use the latest technology in their activities,” he notes.

The material seized in Operation Oikos, in 2019, reinforces this idea. 

Then, the Police seized two encrypted phones from the two alleged leaders of the plot dismantled at the time, former soccer players Raúl Bravo and Carlos Aranda.

Those responsible for the investigations always considered that both terminals could contain a good part of the keys to know the supposed real scope of their activities and, therefore, they tried by all means to access their content.

In fact, in some of the intervened telephone conversations, other alleged members of the plot spoke of using this type of device to hold the most compromising conversations.

“When you are going to talk about something, be mobile, be…”, one said to his interlocutor. 

For this reason, the researchers asked experts from the Police, the National Cryptologic Center (dependent on the CNI secret service) and several European laboratories to try to circumvent the encryption, but without success.

So they asked the judge in the case to send them to the digital forensic laboratory that Interpol has in Singapore.

In their brief, the agents recognized “the technical impossibility, due to the sophisticated level of encryption, of making the dump [access to content]” in Spain.

"They had more security measures than some big drug traffickers," a high-ranking police officer summed up for this newspaper at the time.

The magistrate authorized the shipment, but the mobile phones ultimately did not travel to Singapore.

Interpol experts also saw no way to unlock them.

So the riddle is still waiting to be revealed at police stations.

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