How they caught the "Maestro of match-fixing" ??

Crime doesn’t pay

The purpose of hot copy is to signpost exceptional examples of journalism that you might otherwise have missed.

We miss them too, sometimes, and for this week’s edition we are turning the clock back to September.

This extraordinary two-part series from the Washington Post about match-fixing in professional tennis is simply too good to ignore.

It reads like a novel you can’t put down and is as visually stunning as your favourite neo-noir Netflix crime series.

The protagonist is chief inspector Nicolas Borremans, a bald and broad-shouldered Belgian who takes on a case that no one else wants – irregular wagers on obscure tennis matches.

Borremans, who cycles 40 miles to work every day and is the son of a cheese vendor, eventually unearthed a global match-fixing ring of more than 180 players in 30 countries.

Grigor Sargsyan, an Armenian nicknamed Maestro, was at the top of the pyramid and was caught accepting bags stuffed with cash while being surveilled through a telephoto lens.

Borremans had practically single-handedly discovered the largest match-fixing ring in the history of tennis, while Sargsyan was handed a five-year jail sentence.

The Washington Post’s international investigative correspondent Kevin Sieff authored the piece, and it is well worth half an hour of your time.

Betr off alone

The Australian Financial Review’s exemplary gambling coverage continued this week with an under-the-radar scoop on Matthew Tripp’s wagering start-up Betr.

Betr – making consecutive appearances in hot copy after last week’s epic payout – reportedly lost the support of News Corp just four months after it launched.

The paper reports that News Corp quietly sold its shares in the sports betting start-up, but only after injecting more than $70m into the company.

Tripp told the AFR on Thursday that he was grateful for News Corp’s initial support, but confirmed it was no longer an investor in the business.

The plot thickened in the Sydney Morning Herald, which revealed that Lachlan Murdoch was never in favour of supporting Betr’s launch into the ultra-competitive Australian market, and had actively advised against it.

Lachlan is now pulling the strings at the media conglomerate after his father, the 92-year-old media baron Rupert Murdoch, stood down in September.

News Corp is understood to have written down a ￡52m loss on investing in Betr. Rumours of Lachlan running round the office while screaming “I told you so” remain unsubstantiated, however…

A conservative wager

The Tory party conference has dominated headlines in the UK this week, mostly due to the sudden scrapping of a high-speed national rail project.

But according to The Independent, culture secretary Lucy Frazer has become the second cabinet minister to take a ￡100 bet that the Conservatives will defeat Labour to win the next election.

The polls suggest otherwise and make grim reading for the Tories, as do the betting odds, with 5/1 currently the best price available, according to Oddschecker.

Frazer swerved the temptation to bet for higher stakes, however, rejecting a wager of ￡1,000, citing her responsibility for the country’s regulated gambling sector.

“I’m also in charge of gambling, so I think let’s leave it there,” she said.

One below-the-line commentor took the opportunity to say what we were all thinking.

“Why wouldn’t she bet ￡1,000? It would surely be claimed on expenses anyway!”

Elsewhere in politics, The Guardian ran a story about gambling industry lobbyists paying more than ￡3,000 per head to sit with ministers during the Tory party’s business day.

Representatives for Flutter Entertainment were in attendance according to the paper, alongside individuals from TikTok, Amazon and the cryptocurrency industry.

You are the company you keep, as they say…

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