Betting A long
investigation into race fixing has ended with the BHA
charging nine people,
including a jockey and several professional footballers.
CORRUPTION T
he British Horseracing Authority (BHA) has charged nine people with
'serious' breaches of the rules of racing after a long and seemingly arduous investi- gation. Among those charged include jockey Andrew Hef- fernan and three footballers - Michael Chopra of Ipswich Town, Nottingham Forest's James Coppinger and former England Under-21 interna- tional Mark Wilson.
The allegations centre on horses being laid to lose on betting exchanges in races that took place between 1 November 2010 and 31 March 2011.
The charges relate to Hef- fernan's riding of three horses - Wanchai Whisper, Gallantry and Silver Guest. All nine are accused of con- spiring with other persons to
BHA charges 9 after complex investigation
commit a corrupt or fraudu- lent practice.
Heffernan, who is now in Australia, is charged with communicating directly or indirectly to one or more betting exchange account holders information relating to the prospects in the race of that horse. He is also charged with giving information in return for some reward, that he offered to receive or received a bribe and that he intentionally failed to ensure that a horse ridden by him was run on its merits.
Of the unlicensed individ- uals, Chopra, Paul Garner, Yogesh Joshee, Douglas Shelley and Wilson have also been charged with offering bribes to Heffernan. Kelly Inglis is also charged with conniving with Heffernan to offer to receive bribes from Chopra, Garner, Joshee, Shelley and Wilson. Garner is also charged of placing lay bets on horses trained by Alan McCabe at a time when he was entered as an employee at that stable. Paul Scotney, the BHA's
Ladbrokes strengthens trading team
RECRUITMENT L
adbrokes has appointed a new a new trading director in the shape of Andy Wright, who will join from Betclic Everest Group where he was sportsbook director having previously been group trading director. Previously Wright was managing director of Stan James where he was responsible for introduc- ing automated trading technologies. He will assume responsibility for driving Ladbrokes ongoing trading improvement pro- gramme which has seen Ladbrokes significantly increase the range of markets available to cus- tomers using automated pricing and technology feeds as well as improving its trading capabilities through the extensive adoption of algorithmic solutions.
Wright commented: “Ladbrokes has made good progress in its reinvigora- tion programme and I’m looking forward to working with the trading team to further improve Ladbrokes competitive position.”
Joining Wright at Lad- brokes is Tony Robinson, who has been appointed trading strategy director. Robinson was founder of odds-comparison service OddsChecker before launching his own trading technology firm Heron Solutions and he has many years of experience across a number of leading betting companies. In addition, Ladbrokes has signed an agreement to work with Heron Solutions to deliver trading technology innova- tions, thus bolstering its capabilities further. These developments continue
10 BettingBusinessInteractive • OCTOBER 2012
Ladbrokes' strategy of taking ownership of sportsbook technology and intellectual protocol. Ladbrokes chief execu- tive Richard Glynn said: “We’re pleased to welcome someone with Andy's extensive online experi- ence. We have already made significant progress in delivering our trading improvements and Andy will help take us to the next stage. In doing so he will be ably assisted by Tony Robinson, with whom he has worked in the past, and a new dedicated trading solutions team who will be tasked with constantly developing innovative trading solutions and imple- menting them swiftly.” Robinson added: “I am looking forward to working with Andy again having worked with him previously at BlueSquare
director of integrity services, compliance and licensing, said: “The charges the BHA has issued are the result of a long and complicated investi- gation. This process has taken significant time and resources. However, investi- gations such as these are very similar to fraud investigations and as such are complex and time consuming.
“Furthermore, we encoun- tered difficulties in obtaining telephone records from certain individuals who refused to co-operate. This
resulted in us having to make a number of applications to the High Court for orders against their mobile tele- phone service providers for disclosure of the relevant records.”
He added: “We hope that today's announcement demonstrates our commit- ment to deterring and detect- ing wrong-doing and taking action against those who we believe to have breached the Rules. However, racegoers and those betting on British racing should be reassured
JOCKEY ANDREW HEFFERNAN IS ONE OF THE NINE ACCUSED
ANALYSIS
The action taken by the British Horseracing Authority at least demonstrates that the organisation takes corruption extremely seriously and is prepared to diligently police racing itself, unlike other sports which appear to take a more laissez faire approach and are happy to allow the Gambling Commission's corruption unit to take the lead. However with the regulator recently criticised for 'mission creep' in the sport, more emphasis will probably (and rightly) be placed back with the sporting regulators. They could do worse to take a look at the example made by the BHA and attempt to emulate its effectiveness and determination in such a wide ranging investigation.
that instances of this nature are extremely rare and that the overwhelming majority of races are free of suspicion.” Back in the mists of time, the betting exchanges would be getting blamed for this alleged example of corrup- tion given that it involved laying horses to lose, but as Betfair argued at the time, the paper trail created by laying a horse, or indeed placing any bet, on the exchange can actually be used as a tool to police the sport.
Betsson issues warning with 5.5 per cent margin
UNFAVOURABLE RESULTS S
RICHARD GLYNN: 'MADE SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS IN DELIVERING OUR TRADING IMPROVEMENTS'
and Stan James. My role will be to drive innovation in the trading function and having already spent some months at Ladbrokes as a consultant I’m pleased to be taking a permanent role at what is an exciting time for the company in its rein- vigoration programme.”
wedish betting and gaming firm Betsson has warned the market
that revenues for the third quarter are unlikely to be as high as expected. The company has revealed that revenues in the third quarter are estimated to be between SEK 525m and SEK 535m (£49.1m-£50.0) and the oper- ating profit (EBIT) is esti- mated to be between SEK 115m and SEK 130m (£10.7m-£12.1m.
The company added: “The
third quarter of the year holds an unusually short part of the high season for gambling, due to the late start of the European soccer leagues. This has affected especially the sportsbook, but has also had a negative impact on the activity in other product seg- ments.
“Furthermore, the quarter has so far had many, for Betsson, unfavourable sports results, which have contributed to a low sports-
book margin. The sports- book margin after free bets is approximately 5.5 per cent so far in the quarter, which can be compared to 7.6 per cent during the third quarter last year.”
The company said that activity level during the third quarter has also been nega- tively affected by certain initial issues in connection to the technical platform migra- tion of
Betsafe.com. Exten- sive actions have been initiated, which has con- tributed to the recovery of the customer activity in the second half of September . It added: “Based on under- lying customer activity in the third quarter, with all time high (ATH) in comparable Euro figures in deposits in combination with high gross turnover in sportsbook, the management believes, however, that Betsson has good opportunities to grow faster than the market in the future.”
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