The Whistle-Blower

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What’s German for cheat? Football fans have decided: Every time a referee makes a bad call these days, the stands erupt with chants of “Hoy-zer! Hoy-zer! Hoy-zer!” Two weeks ago, German national-league referee Robert Hoyzer admitted fixing matches in 2003 and 2004. Hoyzer, 25, allegedly received j50,000 and a plasma TV to fix four matches by inventing penalties and sending off a player who complained. But that was just the start of a series of revelations that make this Germany’s worst football-betting scandal in 34 years—tarnishing the country’s image just as it prepares to host the 2006 World Cup. Hoyzer was apparently recruited after he started visiting the Cafe King sports bar in Berlin, from where the betting was controlled. He was caught when two other referees went to authorities with their suspicions. After Hoyzer’s confession, police arrested three Croatian brothers who ran the Cafe King and seized bank accounts containing j2.4 million. And it didn’t stop there. The Berlin prosecutor’s office says it’s investigating 25 people, including four referees and 14 players, for possible fraud. “We are talking about organized crime,” said Bundesliga chief Werner Hackmann. Professor Christiane Eisenberg, a social and cultural historian at Humboldt University in Berlin, says the globalization of gambling has made it tough for the government to police sports. “Even if German state authorities succeeded in bringing in new betting regulations, it’s hard for any authority to prevent people from Internet betting, which is a global business,” she says. With less than 500 days until the start of the World Cup, investigators need to do some fancy footwork. And Germany needs to work on its defense.