Scandal escalates: Turkish referee placed 18,227 bets
Jan Novak
Dailysports's expert
The president of the Turkish Football Federation, Ibrahim Hacıosmanoğlu, revealed in an interview with CNN Turk that one local referee was found to have made a staggering 18,227 bets. According to him, the investigation also uncovered the involvement of another 42 officials, who collectively placed over a thousand bets.
This scandal has become one of the biggest in the history of Turkish football, casting a shadow of doubt over the integrity of the refereeing community. The federation plans to tighten oversight by introducing a system to monitor referees' financial activities and to impose lifetime bans on anyone found betting on sporting events.
Earlier, Reuters reported that the Turkish Football Federation suspended 149 referees for gambling-related offenses for periods ranging from eight months to one year. According to an internal federation investigation based on government data, 371 out of 571 active referees in the professional leagues held betting accounts, and 152 were actively placing bets.
