May 25 - In a case involving European football match fixing, the Swiss Football Association announced that it had suspended nine football players from the league.
While the suspension is for at least one year, five have been suspended indefinitely.
Four out of these five were named as Mario Bigoni, Darko Damjanovic and Marc Lutolf, who all play with Gossau, and Pape Omar Faye who plays for Thun.
Eldar Ikanovic, who also plays for Thun, received a 36 month suspension by the Football Association, while another player on his team, David Blumer, received a 24 month suspension.
According to the charges brought against the nine, they infringed the anti gambling rules set up by the Swiss football league.
This involved receiving money in order to influence or change in some way the results of Swiss League games.
The nine worked in a type of cartel, with Damjanovic serving as an intermediary between all of them. Some of the players recruited others to fix matches, while other received payment in order to manipulate Swiss League football matches.
This is not the first time that match fixing has taken place on European soil.
UEFA and German authorities recently announced that they were in the process of investigating a massive match fixing scandal that was uncovered, involving over 200 games in multiple European countries.
Top sports betting sites report irregular betting patterns to authorities and professional bodies if they come across them.
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