Punishment awaits serial offenders Azampur FC

Two years after being acquitted of allegations of illegal activities such as online betting, spot-fixing, match manipulation, and match-fixing in the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), Azampur FC Uttara are all set to receive punishment by the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) over the same allegations.

The Fixed-Match Identification Committee (FIC) of BFF has submitted its final report to its disciplinary committee following a one-year investigation, conducted in light of three league match data provided by FIFA through its Fraud Detection System last year.

Azampur FC, who were relegated to the Bangladesh Championship League (BCL) in 2023-24 but did not play in the second tier, were allegedly involved in malpractices during the 2022-23 season matches against Mohammedan (Feb 10, 2023), Abahani (Feb 24, 2023) and Sheikh Jamal (Feb 17, 2023).

The FIC found involvement of the club's players and officials in the two matches against Mohammedan and Abahani during its investigation, which was conducted between May, 2023 and March, 2024.

The club had previously come under scrutiny over match-fixing in a BCL match against Farashganj SC in 2022 following allegations by its coach Saifur Rahman Moni.

BFF subsequently launched the investigation in April that year and cleared the club of any wrongdoing in September the same year, allowing them to play in top-tier league in 2023-24 season as runners-up of the second tier.

BFF's competitions manager Zaber Bin Taher Ansari told The Daily Star that the committee found the involvement of the club by analysing data and videos and through interrogation of its players and officials.

Zaber also informed that even though the players and officials denied their involvement in illegal activities in BPL matches, a whistle-blower helped the committee by providing information in the early stage of investigation.

Replying to a query, Zaber said, "Mohammedan and Abahani have not been included in the process because neither those clubs had any role in illegal activities while the match against Sheikh Jamal was not considered as there were no similarities between FDS suspicion and the outcome of the match."

The report was forwarded to the BFF disciplinary committee, who sat for its first meeting on May 20 this year and served show-cause notices to around 10 players and officials.

"As per the instructions from the disciplinary committee, we are going to issue show-cause notices to the rest of the players and officials within a couple of days. Approximately half of the 10 players and officials replied to the show-cause notices explaining their positions against the allegations regarding matches against Mohammedan and Abahani in early 2023," said Zaber.

The BFF official also informed that the disciplinary committee is likely to mete out the punishments following feedback over the second show-cause notice.

The severity of the punishment is expected to be decided on the basis of the reports provided by the FIC, which had previously punished three clubs in in 2021 and 2022 for illegal activities in the BPL and the BCL.

Arambagh KS were demoted to the third tier in 2021 tier and then Uttar Baridhara Club and Karwanbazar Samaj Kallyan Sangsha were demoted to the 2nd and 3rd divisions respectively.