Israel Police arrested 17 individuals on Monday, including active players and senior club officials, following a months-long undercover investigation into match-fixing, bribery, and money laundering within the domestic soccer league.
While authorities did not officially name the organization, local media identified the target as F.C. Kiryat Yam, a team suspected of being used as a platform for a criminal syndicate to manipulate results for illegal betting profits over the last three years.
Investigators allege the scheme involved tens of millions of shekels and utilized “double contracts” to facilitate the fraud, noting that “the criminal organization used the team as a platform to commit criminal offenses, including suspicion of skewing results, buying and selling games for the purpose of profiting from illegal gambling.”
According to the police, the sophisticated operation allowed suspects to place bets on outcomes that were already predetermined through bribery, emphasizing that “after it was possible to know the outcome of the bet, the bets were made with the outcome already known.”