Tuesday, September 27, 2005
The Brazilian football referee Edílson Pereira de Carvalho was detained by the Brazilian Federal Police on Saturday in Jacareí, a city 78 kilometers from São Paulo. According to the Public Prosecution Service, he refereed games in a partial manner so that only predetermined teams could win.
The businessman Nagib Fayad was also detained in São Paulo. Both are suspected of being part of a group suspected of manipulating games in order to profit through million dollar bets on sport bettings websites.
Brazilian prosecutor Roberto Porto said that investigators have 20 thousand hours of taped phone conversations back to October 2004 and that they have no doubt that Carvalho was fraudulently refereeing football games.
According to the spokeman of the Federal Police, Victor Hugo Rodrigues Alves, a referee would be contacted by phone by Fayad who would inform the referee which team should win the game. Fayad would then place the bets on Internet websites. Part of the profit would be given to the referee. Rodrigues claimed that additional people were involved.
On Saturday the referee told Federal Police that he favored various football teams while he administered games during the Liberators of the Americas Cup, Paulista Championship, and the Brazilian championship.