Fixing Scandal Rocks Soccer World
HOLMES: In New Orleans, the Super Bowl began with Alicia Keys giving a moving rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner." Have a listen.</s>ALICIA KEYS, MUSICIAN (singing): Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light.</s>HOLMES: The 14 time Grammy winner played on a white grand piano in the middle of the field. Some of the players tearing up as they listened to her. Now, the audience cheered when a live picture was shown of soldiers from Camp Courage in Kabul, Afghanistan, who were listening to the national anthem and watched the game from there. Well, the rest of the world loves soccer like Americans love their own brand of football. In fact, it's called football everywhere else in the world. So you can imagine the impact of learning that hundreds of international soccer matches may have been fixed. The European law enforcement agency, Europol, is investigating what is a huge corruption scandal. Don Riddell here with the details. You know, Don, the thing about this is, the style of this has never been seen before. You've got hundreds of players and officials allegedly taking bribes from organized -- how does that happen? We're not talking about backyard pickup games either.</s>DON RIDDELL, CNN INTERNATIONAL WORLD SPORT ANCHOR: No. These are real games. I mean this -- we've known for some time that some games are fixed. And in some parts of the world, they're perhaps more likely to be fixed than others. But I think what is really surprising here is the number of games and where these games have been played. We're talking World Cup qualifiers, European championships qualifiers. These tournaments don't come any bigger and more prestigious than this. Champions league games, which is the top club competition in Europe. We're talking about 680 suspicious games involving 425 match officials, club officials, players, known criminals from some 15 countries around the world. I mean this is absolutely massive. And just to put it into context. Rob Wainwright, who was giving these details earlier, he works for Europol, he's the director, he said, "it is clear to us, this is the biggest ever investigation into suspected match fixing in Europe. It has yielded major results, which we think have uncovered a big problem for the integrity of football in Europe. We have uncovered an extensive criminal network."</s>HOLMES: Integrity of football is sort of the key thing there because, you know, if you're going to ask the question, well, what could be the fallout from this? Once people start doubting results, that's it, isn't it?</s>RIDDELL: Yes. I mean, I've been to some games. I've seen some incredible turnarounds.</s>HOLMES: Yes.</s>RIDDELL: Some incredible performances. And you're amazed by it. You are wowed by it. You will tell your grandchildren about those games once -- you know, one day in the future. I mean take last night with the Super Bowl.</s>HOLMES: Yes. Yes.</s>RIDDELL: San Francisco coming back in the third quarter, scoring 17 points. We all want to believe that's real. I'm sure it was. But once you start thinking, well, maybe not, then, you're not going to bother watching, you're not going to bother going to the games any more.</s>HOLMES: And who do they think is behind it, you know?</s>RIDDELL: Well, I mean, in this particular case --</s>HOLMES: To pull something off like that, either, and keep it quiet, but, yes.</s>RIDDELL: Well, you know, it's interesting. When you look at the amount of money that was -- that they apparently have made out of this, we're not talking about billions of dollars. It's kind of, you know, millions and low numbers of millions. But I guess, if you're just putting small bets on here or there, perhaps it's going to be a lot harder to get caught. But, I mean, it -- they're looking at an operation that's based in Singapore that has tentacles going absolutely everywhere.</s>HOLMES: Staggering stuff. Good to see you, Don.</s>RIDDELL: Yes, and you, Mike.</s>HOLMES: Don Riddell joining us here with some sporting news. Well, here's some other news. He hasn't been out in public for more than a glimpse in years. But Fiddle Castro, well, he was out and about in Havana yesterday. We'll tell you why when we come back.