How did Berbr rule football? The footage shows what happened during the manipulated matches – ČT24 – Czech Television

According to football personalities, Roman Berbr was an unrestricted ruler with unlimited power, so accusations of widespread corruption were not a surprise to many. It has been talked about for years that it affects matches in lower leagues. The man, who started as a referee, worked in clubs and also worked for the State Security, allegedly promoted his interests in a very hard way and also combated expressions of disapproval.

According to Michal Listkiewicz, the former head of the FACR Jury, people were afraid to speak out against Berbr. “Many people secretly told me that Mr. Berbr is a bad person and destroys Czech football. But everyone was scared, “he says.

Police have now accused twenty people of corruption, four of whom went straight to custody. According to the media, Berbra, who has already ended up in the leadership of the association, is also suspected by the police of embezzling 850,000 Pilsen regional football associations.

Police do not comment on the details of the investigation. According to the available information, she documented at least a dozen football matches, the result of which Berbr claimed with other accused, according to investigators. Most of them were Slavoj Vyšehrad’s matches, in whose favor the referees had to intervene for a fee.

A Brno police officer whistled in favor of Vyšehrad

For example, footage from last year’s match between Vyšehrad and Sokol Živanice shows that it was full of controversial moments with the awarding of yellow cards, which can serve as intimidation of the team. In this case Živanice. Referee Robert Hájek, a Brno police officer who had already been expelled by the South Moravian Jury in the past, whistled according to footage obtained by the Czech Television Reporters in favor of Vyšehrad.

According to the police, the victory of Vyšehrad in this case cost at least 100 thousand crowns, and both main accusations – Roman Berbr and the head of Vyšehrad Roman Rogoz – were to be involved in corruption. According to police charges, Berbr arranged for selected referees to whistle the match. Rogoz, who is also in custody, then had to hand over the mentioned 100,000 to the referee Robert Hájek, nicknamed Robin, through another official directly in front of the headquarters of the Football Association in Strahov, Prague.

But sometimes Berbr and Rogoz were to get involved, even though Vyšehrad did not play. For example, in the case of the match Olympia Radotín with FK Dobrovice. Radotín threatened the Vyšehrad team in the table, so the assignment was that Radotín would not get the full number of points for the match. He succeeded because he didn’t win in regular time. He won except for penalties. The referee of this match, Tomáš Grimm, also ended up in custody.

The fourth person in custody is former football player Michal Káník. At the same time, he has already been convicted in the past in connection with the manipulation and bribery of matches.

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Berbr was also to use his wife, former head of judges Dagmar Damková, to influence the judges. She is not accused of anything and defends her husband on social networks. Five years ago, some important judges began to complain about the joint influence of Berbra and Damková. They generally had to quit, and Berbr and Damkova filed lawsuits against them. They asked for an apology and money.

The dispute between referee Tomáš Kovařík and Berbr and Damková even culminated in a judicial scandal. It turned out that the judge, who first ruled against the referee, maintained an intimate relationship with the then head of the Football Association and Berbr’s friend Miroslav Pelta.

“I was shocked, of course, when I found out. On the other hand, the course of the meeting was so strange that, of course, he indicated that there was definitely something unfair, that it could not be normal, that she would suddenly not allow witnesses to be called, “Kovařík returns to the events.

The judge was punished by the Supreme Administrative Court with a one-year reduction in salary, and the lawsuit against Kovařík ended in other courts with the opposite result. Berbr and Damkova lost.

The case is linked to the mafia linked to betting in Asia

However, some lawsuits have still not been settled by the courts. “The distrust of our football was huge and Berbr was behind it all, it was something I just couldn’t agree with. And I was really one of the first to point it out and asked badly, “adds the former representative Ladislav Vízek, against whom Berbr also filed a lawsuit.

Who benefited from the whole case of influencing matches in lower leagues? There is speculation that the Berbra case will be linked to the betting mafia connected to Asian online bookmakers. In the case of Czech offices, it is not possible to bet on lower competitions enough to make sense of hundreds of thousands of bribes. As a rule, not a lot of money is spent.

“It would be suspicious, for example, in the division from the amount exceeding five thousand crowns. And when we talk about the third league, it is, for example, ten thousand crowns. This can already be very suspicious. So one of the variants is that if such bets were made at all, they took place abroad, “thinks Pavol Boško, bookmaker of the betting agency Tipsport.

In any case, the accusation of widespread corruption in football came at a time when the Football Association had not yet recovered from the accusations of its former chairman Miroslav Pelta. The accusation of Roman Berbr may trigger the years expected earthquake behind the scenes of Czech football. However, the management of the association has not yet heard the call to resign.

However, there are already voices that maybe it was not just about manipulating second-league or third-league football. “Unfortunately, I believe that in the course of the investigation it will become clear that the first league may have been affected by this,” thinks Pavel Šedlbauer, Chairman of the Board of FC Teplice, noting that Czech football could finally be cleansed.

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