Probably, in one of the biggest raids in soccer history, El Salvador’s anti-corruption wing officials raided as many as eleven players simultaneously after they suspected to be involved in match fixing. Reportedly, the action followed by governing body’s suspension of 22 players for their alleged connection in match fixing, money laundering, and cheating. The raid is said to be for collecting supporting evidence in six cities and authorities seized players’ cell phones, laptops, and other electronic gadgets supposed to have inside information for their money transfers. Their national and international bank accounts are also clutched down to avoid any contamination to the evidence. This could be a part of one of the biggest match fixing scandals which include some of the high profile matches involving United States and Mexico as well. The officers are confident to chargesheet all the players for at least three charges including fraud while more disclosers would be made after scrutinizing all the collected documents. Prosecutor said, “Possibly there are officials and some high-level people involved; we are going to get to the bottom of it.”
Notably, there are more investigations being carried on by local administration to track out any misconduct being done by local teams and national investigation will take help of these findings before their finally present players in the court of law.
Out of 22 suspended players there are some known names like, Benji Villalobos, Carlos Carrillo, Carlos Romeo Monteangudo, Christian Castillo, Dagoberto Portillo, Darwin Bonilla, Dennis Alas, Eliseo Quintanilla, Emerson Umana, Jose Alfredo Pacheco, Jose Miguel Granadino, Marvin Gonzalez, Miguel Montes, Ramon Alfredo Sanchez, Ramon Flores, Reynaldo Villeda, Rodolfo Zelaya, Rodrigo Alejandro Martinez, Victor Turcios, William Osael Romero, and Luis Alonso Anaya.
To make this punishment even harsher, governing body has requested FIFA to extend its scope to cover all international matches. The regional governing body, CONCACAF has also supported one of the widest corrective measures to eradicate match fixing; it issued a statement saying, “The Confederation fully supports the Football Federation of El Salvador and other pertinent organizations involved in the above mentioned investigation and hopes for a fair due process in order to determine the validity of these accusations.
“The fight against match-manipulation to protect the integrity of the beautiful game is a top priority for the Confederation. In alignment with FIFA guidelines and in line with CONCACAF’s commitment to ensure the legitimacy of each game played throughout the region, it is our duty to fight against organized crime alongside all stakeholders involved.”