Legal practitioner, Desmond Nii Adamah Sackey, has asked the Ghana Football Association (GFA) to take steps to criminalise match-fixing if the Association wants to make headway in the fight against the canker.

He believes criminalizing match-fixing in Ghana, as pertains in the UK, will empower state institutions like the Ghana Police and EOCO to investigate allegations of match manipulation which affects the integrity of the Ghana league.

His comments come after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned all punishments imposed by the GFA on players involved in an alleged match-fixing game between Inter Allies and Ashanti Gold SC.

Twenty-two players were sanctioned by the Disciplinary Committee of the Ghana FA, after being found guilty of match manipulation of that GPL Week 34 fixture between the two teams played at the Obuasi Len Clay Stadium on July 17, 2021.

The Professional Football Association of Ghana (PFAG) through the International Federation of Professional Footballers (FIFPro) appealed the issue on behalf of the banned players at CAS to overturn the decision.

After several months of proceedings, CAS in its Arbitral Award delivered on Thursday, July 27, 2023, and sent to all the parties, overturned the sanctions, annulling all punishment imposed on the players.

Speaking in an interview with Luv Fm in Kumasi, lawyer Desmond Nii Adamah Sackey emphasized the need to empower state institutions to support the fight against match-fixing by criminalizing the act in Ghana.

‘’This [match fixing] is clearly organised crime and I do not think that the FA has the capabilities to investigate fully a matter like this, and then to be able to bring the persons to book, it involves a lot, very sophisticated investigations. You have to go through phone records, momo transactions and all that.

‘’When the matter first came, some of us advocated that we should try and engage the state to criminalize match-fixing because as we speak, match-fixing is not a criminal offence in Ghana.

“If you criminalize it like the UK and other places have done, then you are able to get the EOCO, the Police and all those other agencies to come in who clearly have more resources in terms of investigating these things to be able to investigate them and then bring those persons to book.

‘’So, if we are able to engage the state to pass laws then we are able to solicit the resources from the state to be able to fight this canker,’’ he said.