The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) has partnered with the Sport Integrity Global Alliance (Siga) to promote integrity and transparency in Brazilian football.
The main objective of the collaboration is to “respond to urgent challenges facing Brazilian football, prompting the modernisation of the sector, the qualification of its agents and a culture of integrity at all levels.”
Ednaldo Rodrigues, CBF President, commented: “We have signed a very important partnership to combat all types of crime that may occur in football, match-fixing, money laundering in football, racism, harassment. With competence in all these topics, SIGA is the world’s largest institution in sports integrity.”
The partnership builds upon Siga’s existing work as the world’s largest coalition in the field of integrity in sport. Its portfolio features organisations such as the UEFA, the São Paulo Football Federation and Liga Portugal, as well as other leagues and national federations.
“The company works independently, always making the sport cleaner, more transparent. We do the same here. SIGA will work with the Integrity Unit at CBF, which has been working with all major institutions in the world,” Rodrigues added.
“The CBF’s tolerance for any type of crime in football is zero. We are going to work in this way, making this partnership today and maintaining our partnership with FIFA.
“As a member of FIFA, we will continue to unfurl this flag in all countries. Today we have taken a very important step, but it will not be the only one. We will continue to work in this direction.”
The event at the CBF headquarters was attended by the Vice-President Hélio Cury, alongside Ricardo Lima, the President of the Bahian Football Federation; Gustavo Vieira, President of the Football Federation of the State of Espírito Santo de Futebol; Felipe Feijó, President of the Alagoas Football Federation, and other directors of the organisation.
In a report published by Sportradar Integrity Services earlier this month, Brazil saw a decrease in the total number of suspicious betting alerts. Despite this notable decrease, the country still retained the top spot as the country with the highest number of matches detected.
However, the decrease does show that the country is moving in the right direction and this deal further develops steps taken by the CBF, when it appointed Eduardo Gussem as its Integrity Officer last year.
Oversight of sports integrity will take on greater significance later this year when the country launched a nationwide betting market. Monitoring integrity and safeguarding sports is a key regulatory requirement of the legislation governing this sector.
