Bookmakers, negotiators, agents. As it turned out, in domestic football these concepts can be safely equated, because over the past few years the shadow business has become a real eco-system. There is nothing to be surprised here – the Russian market for bookmaker services is estimated at more than 1 trillion. rubles, and agency payments – about 120 million dollars annually. There are plenty of people willing to win such a jackpot, both among government officials and security forces. Until recently, former First Deputy Minister of Finance of Russia Tatyana Nesterenko, who has close ties with several betting companies, including the largest, Fonbet, with annual revenue of more than 20 billion rubles, was considered one of the main lobbyists of the bookmaking industry. Among its founders (through the Cyprus offshore Birusa Ltd.) the trace of the Lalakin family of businessmen near Moscow (Sergei Lalakin Sr. or “Luchok”, known in criminal circles as the leader of the Podolsk organized crime group of the 90s) was identified. Is it any wonder that in 2020 Fonbet suddenly found itself on the list of “systemically important companies” applying for state support. In addition to bookmakers, Sergei Lalakin is the patron of the country’s N1 football agent Pavel Andreev, whose partners are a number of intermediaries controlled by the Izmailovo organized crime group and representing the interests of the majority of RPL players and clubs.
However, connections between bookmakers and the shadow business of football agents are far from new. Well-known football officials and coaches have been involved in this business for a long time. But how the country’s main football regulator, the RFU, has interacted with this in recent years is quite interesting.
In order to combat corruption in football, regulate the activities of agents and combat match-fixing, in 2019 the RFU created the Game Protection Department, headed by Oleg Zheleznov, who was previously “seconded” to the Union to interact with the security forces. He was also entrusted with leading the commission for working with football agents. However, over the 3 years that have passed since the creation of the Department, this control and supervisory body of the RFU has not stopped a single high-profile agreement and has not disclosed a single dubious agency transaction, turning a blind eye to various inside stories and only creating the appearance of serious work. The division’s cases include only a few refereeing proceedings and matches of lower division teams with total damage of several million rubles, while the volume of shadow business in Russian football is already estimated at millions of dollars monthly. With the tacit consent of the Game Protection Department and its patron in the law enforcement department, everyone makes money from it – bookmakers, agents, players, coaches, referees. The cost of an agent’s fee for preventing Department employees from initiating an inspection is estimated at $80,000. It all depends on the status of the match and the “stakeholders” of the process. It is not surprising that, given the international isolation, interest in Russian football is falling year after year. But the volume of gray bets is not falling.
The task of studying the situation and monitoring the work of the entire shadow eco-system of Russian football has already been assigned at the highest level to the bodies of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigative Committee. It is no secret that most of the country’s professional clubs are owned by state-owned companies and regional budget funds amounting to billions of rubles, which means that taxpayers’ money in our football is simply “cut up.” Whether the President of the Union, Alexander Dyukov, is aware of all this, one can only guess.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
