Ro PS - Match Fixing Allegations and Scandal

Match Fixing Allegations and Scandal

Throughout the 2000s, RoPS became infamous for suspected involvement in match fixing.

RoPS lost the 2004 league match against Tampere United 5–1 after a suspiciously poor performance by the club's Serbian goalkeeper, Ratko Marijanovic. The Football Association of Finland concluded that there was no reason to investigate.

In 2008 Der Spiegel claimed that the 2005 MyPa–RoPS league match had been fixed. MyPa won the match 4–1, and the name of RoPS midfielder Adrian Pelka was mentioned. That match was his last for the club. Der Spiegel alleged that at least two of the goals could be attributed to Pelka's poor performance.

British betting agencies reported unusual betting on Helsinki club Atlantis to be defeated in their match against RoPS in autumn 2006. The match was a 2–2 draw, but Atlantis goalkeeper Aleksandr Mistshuk was later convicted of receiving a bribe. No RoPS players were involved in the investigation.

Unusual betting activity was reported in 2008 for the match between RoPS and VPS Vaasa, and Estonian defender Aleksandr Kulik was later sacked. At the time, Valeri Bondarenko, Kulik's former coach at Estonian club Trans Narva, was manager of RoPS and was implicated in match fixing in his home country, Estonia. Earlier in the season, RoPS had already sacked Ukrainian goalkeeper Nikolai Pavlenko, whose performance in their match against Espoo club FC Honka had aroused suspicion. Jouko Kiistala, then CEO of RoPS, said in a radio interview that the club will would no longer hire players whose mother tongue was Russian. Bondarenko was sacked in May 2008.

In spring 2011 the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation started a large investigation into match fixing. On February 25 Singaporean businessman Wilson Raj Perumal, a convicted match fixer, was arrested after entering Finland with a fake passport. The National Bureau of Investigation suspected that over 30 games between 2008 and 2011, mostly from the Finnish premier league, had been fixed or manipulated.

On July 19, 2011, the Rovaniemi Court of Appeal convicted Perumal and nine RoPS players of match fixing. Altogether 24 games had been manipulated, and the intended score had been achieved in 11 of them. Perumal was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to return 150,000 euros deemed to be match-fixing profits. The bribes ranged from 500 euros offered to one player to a total of 80,000 euros offered to eight players. The highest total of bribes for one individual was slightly over 40,000 euros. The players received suspended sentences.