Introduction

Persons involved in organised crime do not live in isolation, but are socially embedded in society (Hobbs 1998; Van de Bunt et al. 2014; Von Lampe 2016). Of course, they will attempt to keep their illegal activities hidden from the sight of investigative authorities and people who live in their neighbourhoods, but this does not mean they are ‘invisible’. To a certain extent, they may also display their material wealth, for example by driving around in expensive cars or through generosity. The latter is also expressed by sponsoring or organising social activities. The world of sport, and within it especially football, appears to be particularly attractive to criminal sponsors and vulnerable to criminal infiltration (Bruinsma et al. 2018, 2019, 2020).

Criminal infiltration in sports undermines the moral resilience of society against crime but also the integrity of the sports world. Clubs which receive criminal funding usually have an unfair advantage in competitions. In 2016, a journalist noticed that in the previous ten-years eight unexpectedly successful amateur football clubs had been the subject of criminal or fiscal investigation (Geerds 2016). Although accepting a sponsor with a criminal background may lead to short term success, it may also put the continuity of the club at risk. This is illustrated by an older case which took place in Amsterdam and concerned amateur football club Türkiyemspor. In 2007, club president Nedim Imaç was murdered and exposed as a large-scale heroin trafficker (Meijer 2012; Nelen 2021). In the years before, Türkiyemspor had been celebrated as an outstanding example of multicultural integration. Even crown prince (now king) William-Alexander came over to congratulate the club with this achievement (Meijer 2012). However, after the killing of Imaç the club’s reputation was destroyed and it went bankrupt in 2009. Although it was re-established under a different name, the media continue to refer to the event until this day, especially when news about the club is negative (Van Haas 2017). These case examples inspired three exploratory studies which addressed two main questions. First, to what extent does criminal infiltration in amateur football occur, who are involved and what are their motives? Second, how may criminal infiltration be better prevented, both by clubs and public institutions?

So far, criminology has not specifically and systematically addressed the problem of criminal infiltration in amateur sports from the perspective of sponsoring. Instead, studies in the context of sports have focused primarily on corruption and money laundering in professional sports. The first mainly refers to influencing the outcomes of matches through match-fixing, the use of doping and corruption within football associations, such as FIFA (e.g. Boniface et al. 2012; Paoli and Donati 2014; Di Ronco and Lavorgna 2015; Transparency International 2016; Andreff 2019; Nelen 2021; Spapens 2021; Rabin and Corazza 2022; Antonopoulos 2015). Criminal infiltration may indeed increase opportunities to manipulate matches and bet on the outcomes, particularly when criminals own the club or act as board members (Spapens and Olfers 2015; Spapens 2021). Sports may also offer opportunities to launder money in the shape of spending crime money and receiving material or immaterial benefits in return. Investments in players or clubs may result in constructing a plausible legitimate origin of crime money when the player is for instance transferred to another club. This does however require a long-term perspective and is not without risk because sports careers and the club’s success may not develop as expected (FATF 2009).

In amateur sports opportunities for match-fixing and investing crime money and expect it to be returned laundered, may be expected to be less available. Betting operators may for instance not offer matches in low-level amateur competitions, whereas in the Netherlands at the amateur level investment in players is uncommon, as is ownership of clubs. Persons may indeed loan crime money to amateur clubs and create a legitimate origin through repayments. In practice however, sponsoring amateur clubs does not appear to offer large-scale opportunities to launder money with the aim of investing it legitimately in other activities. Furthermore, club loyalty may make it difficult to have the money returned, because supporters will expect that profits be re-invested in the club. Therefore, we must consider other explanations for criminal involvement in amateur sports.

Here, we apply a broad definition of the term ‘criminal infiltration.’ It involves cases in which persons involved in an amateur football club have been arrested and convicted to prison sentences, but also individuals who are under suspicion but hard proof of criminal involvement is yet lacking. The term ‘criminal’ includes involvement in serious and organised crime, such as drug trafficking and money laundering, but it may also refer to white-collar crime, such as fraud and regulatory and fiscal offenses, including those committed by legal entities owned by the suspected person. Suspicion may also be raised by the fact that persons who are linked to an amateur football club have been convicted in the past for serious crimes, but served their sentences. They may also be entrepreneurs who started out as drug offenders but have since managed to make the transition to the ‘upper world’ and no longer appear to commit crimes, but still maintain frequent contact with known members of the criminal underworld or may be associated with members of criminal families or outlaw motorcycle gangs.

This paper is organised as follows. The following section first addresses data collection, which was gathered during three studies which have resulted in policy reports published in Dutch (Bruinsma et al. 2018, 2019, 2020). Then we address the criminal activities the (suspected) criminals were involved in, as well as their roles, to the extent that these could be established in detail, at the clubs, after which their visible motives will be further explored. The fifth section analyses amateur football clubs’ specific vulnerabilities in the context of criminal infiltration and potential prevention measures they could apply. Next, we address the role of different authorities in raising awareness and tackling criminal intervention in amateur football. Finally, the conclusion and discussion section offers a brief reflection on the results obtained.

Data collection

In the Netherlands, the present author and colleagues conducted several studies on criminal infiltration in sports clubs, particularly in football, on which this paper is based. All three studies were explorative. The first study broadly focused on criminal involvement in ‘philanthropy’, and sponsoring football clubs transpired to be the main type. These findings triggered substantial cause for concern amongst public and private actors. The second (small-scale) study was therefore commissioned by a public body in the South of the Netherlands that had been confronted with several cases, to learn more about whether boards of top amateur football clubs were aware of the risk of criminal infiltration, and how they mitigated it, either on their own, or in cooperation with other actors. The third study was commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Public Health, Welfare and Sports to achieve comprehensive insight in the scope of criminal infiltration in all amateur sports and how to detect, prevent and tackle the problem. The three studies therefore covered the same issue, and built upon respective findings, but each was conducted independently. This paper focuses specifically on outcomes regarding football, and leaves aside findings regarding other types of sports as well as criminal involvement in non-profit activities beneficial to society.

Bruinsma et al. (2018) studied the problem of criminals involved in philanthropy from a broad perspective, by looking at sports sponsoring, involvement in charities and ad-hoc charitable activities, as well as involvement in care-related commercial businesses, such as offering persons with physical, mental and addiction problems structured daily activities and therapy. The study comprised two steps. First, we conducted a hit/no-hit survey exploring whether cases involving criminal philanthropy had occurred in the past five years. The questionnaire was sent to all 390 Dutch municipalities and all 10 Regional Information and Expertise Centres (RIECs) in which administrative authorities, the police, the public prosecution service, the tax authorities and other public partners exchange information and coordinate interventions aimed at disrupting serious (organised) crime. Of 167 municipalities that responded, 36% had been confronted with one or more cases, as had all 10 RIECs. Next, interviews were conducted with the RIECs and 10 selected municipalities to discuss case-examples. This included interviews with 20 professionals who were or had been involved in these cases. In addition, we received documents, and in some cases references to media publications about the cases discussed. In interviews, information was collected about 52 cases that had either been completed or were still ongoing. In the current paper we focus on 19 cases in which persons with suspicious backgrounds were linked to amateur football clubs. For the purpose of the present paper, transcripts of relevant cases and interviews have been re-analysed to provide additional information which has not been published earlier.

Second, Bruinsma et al. (2019) conducted a follow-up study in which they interviewed board members of amateur football clubs in the southern provinces of North-Brabant and Zeeland. In total, 16 clubs there are active in the highest national amateur division, and in the 2nd and 3rd amateur leagues, of which 12 participated in the study. In total, 16 interviews were conducted with the club’s presidents, board members or safety officers. The topic list focused on experiences with possible attempts at criminal infiltration, how to detect and prevent such attempts, how to respond, and how to call for support from the police and other public institutions, as well as the football association KNVB.

Finally, Bruinsma and colleagues (2020) conducted a study amongst all amateur sports clubs in the Netherlands, to further explore to what extent clubs’ boards and sports associations were aware of signals that point at attempts of criminal infiltration; measures amateur sport clubs took to prevent criminal infiltration; and barriers and problems which confront amateur sports clubs in their efforts to increase resilience. The study was based on several surveys and expert interviews. To begin with, six questions were added to the panel through which sports clubs are regularly consulted about topics relevant to them (Verenigingspanel). The panel was established in 1998 and comprises a representative number of 2.100 clubs in 65 different sports, out of a total of 28.000 sports clubs in the Netherlands. Questions included whether criminal infiltration in their type of sports took place; policies were in place to prevent this; and which public and private partners could provide assistance. In total 491 sports clubs responded to the questions. Second, a questionnaire was sent out to 74 sports associations who are party to the Dutch National Olympic Committee and the Dutch Sports Federation (NOC*NSF) and response was received from 43 sports associations. Here, two questions were asked: whether indications had been received of criminal infiltration in the past two years, and whether the sports association had taken initiatives to better prevent this. Third, a more extensive questionnaire comprising 20 questions was sent out to 7.600 amateur sports clubs in 11 types of sport to which 1.370 clubs responded. This survey presented respondents a range of situations that may indicate attempts at criminal infiltration, specific vulnerabilities such as financial difficulties, as well as questions on resilience. Fourth, we conducted face-to-face interviews with 14 respondents from sports clubs who had indicated in one or more surveys to have been confronted with actual cases. During these interviews, a total of 20 cases were discussed. Finally, we organized three focus groups with 15 participants in total, and 48 individual interviews with representatives of the RIECs, the police, the KNVB, academic researchers, and institutions that advise municipalities on topics regarding organized (subversive) crime. The main goal was to explore prevention strategies and how clubs and sports associations may follow-up on attempts at criminal infiltration, or take action when persons with suspicious backgrounds had become involved in the club, either with or without the consent of the clubs’ boards. In this paper, focus is on results regarding the Dutch football association KNVB and 2.899 amateur football clubs, of which 516 responded to the main questionnaire.

Suspects’ criminal activities and involvement in the clubs

Criminals may be involved in sports in several ways. Table 1 presents an overview of suspected criminal activities of persons involved in amateur football clubs, and the nature of their involvement, based on the cases studied by Bruinsma et al. (2018). It must be noted that several cases were at the time under investigation, and therefore suspicions were usually not yet confirmed by convictions. Apart from official roles, the same applies to criminals’ covert involvement in the clubs. Information presented in this section and the next is based on re-analysis of the information originally collected by Bruinsma et al. (2018) and discussed in more detail.

Table 1 Suspected criminal activities and involvement in the clubs
Full size table

Table 1 shows that most individuals were suspected of involvement in drug offenses, usually large-scale drug trafficking, and to a lesser extent synthetic drugs production and cannabis cultivation. Money laundering, economic and fiscal offenses were observed in 6 cases, the latter for instance referring to the real estate business. Violent crimes, combined with other offenses, included ‘debt collection’ and regular involvement in bar fights, respectively. The types of crime more or less reflect the main criminal activities in specific parts of the Netherlands. In the south, suspects are often connected to synthetic drugs and cannabis cultivation, whereas in the west, emphasis is more on drug trafficking and cocaine, while in the eastern and northern parts of the country, economic crimes more often appeared in the files.

Most suspects acted as official sponsors through legitimate businesses they operated next to criminal activities they were suspected of. In cases of economic and fiscal offenses, and the case of labour exploitation, the persons ran legitimate businesses that were suspected of administrative and fiscal rule violations apart from criminal offenses. The latter case for instance referred to the owner of a temporary staffing agency employing and exploiting Eastern European migrant workers. In other cases, legitimate businesses were operated primarily to facilitate money laundering by mixing legitimate and illegal financial flows. Some, however, had been able to make a successful transition from the criminal underworld to the ‘upper’ world and could no longer be tied directly to, for instance, drug crimes. One example is an extended family living in a relatively small touristic village, some of whose members were locally seen as successful entrepreneurs and ran several restaurants and a real estate business, while maintaining close contacts with an OMCG and reputed criminals through marriage, whereas distant relatives were associated with large-scale cannabis cultivation, cocaine trafficking and dealing in illicit firearms. Although in some cases sponsorship was small, for instance paying for a single billboard that cost a couple of hundred euros, other suspected criminals were the clubs’ main (shirt) sponsor or provided outfits and other materials to the teams.

Next, in 7 cases authorities suspected criminals of covertly funding amateur football clubs with crime money. They, for example, paid the clubs’ debts, or funded the building of a new club canteen, but mostly used their money to attract better players by paying them extra in cash. Such clubs usually attract the authorities’ attention because of their unexpected successes, whereas nothing had changed in their official financial flows. Another indicator is for instance the appearance of former professional football players at a small local club playing in a low-level amateur division. In two cases, criminals held the position of club president, which became clear when one of them was murdered, and another apprehended abroad following criminal investigation. In both cases, they also appeared to fund the club with crime money. In two other cases, the suspect coached one or more youth teams as a volunteer. These were persons who had for a long time been active for the club. In one case, the authorities started to investigate after the person joined an OMCG, started to appear at the club wearing his colours, and also invited his ‘brothers’ to matches, which caused much concern amongst the parents of youth players.

In 4 cases, suspected criminals used the club canteen to facilitate criminal activities. In one case, the canteen was used to organise illegal poker tournaments. In another, the sponsor temporarily allegedly stored 100 kilos of ecstasy pills at the club in sports bags, which another club member accidently found and reported to the police. Criminals may also use club canteens as a meeting place. One club was investigated because members had complained about ‘guards’ who regularly denied them access to the canteen, apparently because it was in use for other purposes. In one case, suspicions were that the criminal sponsor also supplied drugs that were sold to club members.

Finally, although this was not noted in the cases described above, the media have described several examples of players who were involved in criminal activities (see also Butter and Houtman 2012). Becoming a professional football player is one of the routes to material wealth and prestige for disadvantaged youngsters. However, those who do not succeed in this goal, may still earn a decent income in amateur football, particularly when a criminal sponsor offers extra cash payments (Bruinsma et al. 2019). At the same time, they often maintain friendly contacts with old friends from their neighbourhoods, who have meanwhile taken the criminal path (Spapens, Olfers and EY 2013). Such players are vulnerable to being influenced by criminals who have gained a foothold at their clubs, and there is a risk that such people attract players who maintain close links with the criminal underworld, or worse (Spapens 2020). In the case of Türkiyemspor for example, Ali Akgün, who had been a former captain of the first team, was accused of ordering the liquidation of club president Imaç. Although he was initially acquitted, Akgün was murdered in Turkey in 2014, while the appeal was still pending (Zeeman 2014; Van Haas 2017).

Motives for involvement in amateur football

The next question is what motivates persons with suspicious backgrounds to become involved in amateur football clubs. Although we did not conduct interviews with persons under suspicion, the empirical material collected by Bruinsma et al. (2018) does point at several explanations. To begin with, it may be the clubs that take the initiative. Particularly in small rural municipalities the local football club is a focal point of social life. The suspected persons had usually been club members in the past, or now one or more of their children played there. Those who appeared to be financially well-off, and showed this for instance by appearing at the club in an expensive car, and by generously paying for rounds of drinks, were soon approached by the clubs’ boards with a request to provide financial support. ‘Particularly in small communities it is almost impossible to decline such requests, because it would raise more eyebrows than to donate at least some money’ according to a RIEC-investigator (Bruinsma et al. 2018). Another interviewed RIEC staff member joked that the billboards around the main field of an amateur football club based in a village notorious for being a hotbed of organised drug crime, read as a ‘who-is-who’ of the local criminal underworld. Social embeddedness indeed appears to provide an explanation, and in these cases the sponsors’ contributions were limited, and they were not inclined to claim a role at the club.

This was different for suspects who acted as main official sponsors. They usually enjoyed the positive attention, visited matches, and appeared in photos and videos on the clubs’ websites and in the media, posing for instance with trophies when the club had won a tournament or competition. Their main aim is ‘social laundering’, in other words to improve their status and ‘to be liked’ by the community of which they are a part, as well as to enhance their public image. Generous sponsors may indeed rapidly build goodwill through financially supporting the local football club, particularly when this leads to substantial improvement of results. This is as such not a new phenomenon. After the end of the Second World War, individuals who had been indicted for collaborating during the Nazi occupation, managed to rebuild their societal status in similar fashion (Valk 2009). In addition, the position of being an important sponsor, and even more so club president, allows suspects to foster useful contacts with local business people and politicians, which may help to facilitate their illegal activities, or their legitimate businesses. Being visible as a sponsor may indeed help to advertise the latter, although it usually remains unclear whether such businesses provide a major source of income or instead serve primarily to facilitate money laundering.

According to the empirical data collected by Bruinsma et al. (2018), unofficial sponsors’ motives are more difficult to establish. In some cases, they also had long-time links with the clubs, and simply liked football and to socialise with players. Others presented themselves when they became aware that the club was in financial difficulty. Infiltration usually started with donating small amounts of money (see also Andringa 2016). When the boards were responsive to such contributions, the criminal sponsor would scale up and for instance offer to attract players from other clubs and pay their salaries. Suspicious unofficial sponsors often appeared at clubs that already held a bad reputation, for instance because of regular trouble on the pitch, an intimidating atmosphere towards visiting teams and supporters, and an incomplete and messy financial administration. Suspects usually combined supplying crime money with striving for influence, often without taking up a formal position, although exceptions who became the club’s president did occur. Some subsequently misused their power over the club to facilitate criminal activities, as shown in the examples above.

Cases of suspected match-fixing were not observed in the files, which may however be explained by the fact that gambling operators have only recently started to offer Dutch amateur football games for betting, following new legislation on online betting that became effective in 2021. The authorities were unable to assess whether money laundering was a motive. Official sponsorship usually involved the suspects’ legitimate businesses. They may for instance demand that operating the club’s canteen or maintenance jobs must be contracted to their companies. If one controls the club’s canteen, this may offer the opportunity to artificially inflate turnover. However, investigations by the Tax authority showed that amateur football clubs rather tended to fail to declare income instead of inflating it, usually because of sloppy bookkeeping and lack of oversight (Van Vooren 2018). If a person lends crime money to the club, instead of donating it, this would indeed give it a legitimate origin when the club pays off the debt, but it was unclear whether this had occurred in practice.

Vulnerabilities

This section addresses the question why amateur football clubs are vulnerable to criminal infiltration. Based on an analytical framework developed by Vaughan (2007), we explore vulnerabilities at the level of the club’s management, organisation and the systemic environment in which clubs operate. This section is based on literature study and empirical data collected by Bruinsma et al. (2019) and Bruinsma et al. (2020).

In every organisation, the management has a major influence on corporate culture, and in cases of corporate crime, the top management is usually directly involved in decisions on breaking the rules (Punch 1996). Large egos, placing extreme performance pressure on employees and portraying competitors as ‘the enemy’ to be ‘defeated’ at all costs, increase the likelihood of employees bending the rules to achieve set goals (Punch 1996; Spapens 2018). Indeed, interviews among clubs’ board members conducted by Bruinsma et al. (2019) show that they consider blind ambitions that exceed a club’s regular financial base, to be a key risk factor for criminal infiltration. Second, interviewees pointed at the fact that a closed culture dominates in Dutch amateur football, and clubs’ boards mostly try to solve their own problems instead of seeking help in cases of criminal infiltration. Third, clubs’ boards on the one hand have difficulty in detecting usually vague signals that there may be something wrong with persons who present themselves as potential sponsors. On the other hand, if the criminal sponsor is embedded in the local community, there will usually be all sorts of stories about criminal involvement, unexplained wealth and suspicious behaviour (Bruinsma et al. 2019). The fact that board members come from the same small community often implies they have known the persons since childhood, which may either result in keeping them at a distance, or conversely welcoming them assuming they will be able to keep them under control. Fourth, interviewees mentioned to be struggling with the question where to draw the red line. To what extent should negative stories be believed, or dismissed as gossip? For some, a sponsor is acceptable until being convicted on appeal. Even if a person is apprehended, board members may argue that ‘everyone is innocent until proven guilty of a crime’ (Bruinsma et al. 2019; see also Van Vooren 2018). Dilemmas also arise when the person is acquitted. Referring to the club’s financial well-being provides an opportunity to neutralise those choices. Of course, club members and players of ‘decent’ clubs may limit the boards’ room to manoeuvre by putting on moral pressure or threatening to leave the club. It must be noted that amateur football clubs’ boards, even those playing in the national amateur leagues, depend on volunteers. Risks of criminal infiltration appear to be less at clubs where one or more board members have a professional background in for instance accountancy, the police or the tax authorities, and have a better radar for unusual behaviour. Another protective factor in terms of risk avoidance is board members for whom their professional integrity is of the highest importance (Bruinsma et al. 2019).

At the organisational level, financial vulnerability emerges as a key risk factor (see also FATF 2009). Balancing finances is an ongoing struggle for almost all amateur football clubs. Clubs depend on income generated from sales at their canteens, including renting out the premises for parties and other events, ticket sales, municipal subsidies, and sponsors. Financial flows are predominantly cash based, which can be considered a risk factor, also in terms of tax evasion (Van Vooren 2018). Interviewees acknowledge that a culture of paying players in cash, particularly bonuses after winning a game or competition, is deeply rooted in Dutch amateur football and boards may not always be able to prevent ‘enthusiastic’ supporters from passing players an envelope with money (Bruinsma et al. 2019). Recently, lockdowns during the COVID pandemic and the rise of energy prices following the war in Ukraine, have increased dependence on local authorities’ financial support. Second, although high-level amateur football clubs we interviewed in North-Brabant and Zeeland sometimes have over 1000 members, their organisations mainly rely on volunteers (see also FATF 2009). Almost none had developed written policies regarding compliance and integrity, which could also guide the clubs’ boards, although most had appointed confidence officers who focused on sexual transgressive behaviour, but who could also be approached by members who held information on criminal involvement of other club members or sponsors (Bruinsma et al. 2019, 2020).

At the systemic level, vulnerabilities can be associated with competitive pressure organisations experience and the institutional environment in which they operate (Vaughan 2007). Amateur football clubs may indeed be powerful symbols of the identity of small villages and city neighbourhoods. Moreover, football promotes strong emotions, and clubs may face pressure from their communities to be as successful as possible. This may cause incentives to clubs’ boards to overreach their financial span of control, which is mainly determined by the number of members, and the size and population density of the area from which they draw their members, talents and sponsors. Clubs that become remarkably successful without a clear explanation may not automatically be depending on criminal sponsors, but board members interviewed by Bruinsma et al. (2019) consider unexplained success to be a substantial risk indicator.

At the institutional level, clubs mainly cooperate with local authorities and the Dutch football association KNVB, and to a lesser extent with the police and the Tax authority (Bruinsma et al. 2019, 2020). The first may own the sport complexes clubs use and be responsible for maintenance, or financially support clubs who own their grounds and premises such as canteens. The KNVB is a second important partner, for all sports related and organisational aspects. More recently, the football association specifically addresses ‘subversive crime’ on its website and offers prevention tips. In addition, the Dutch sports umbrella organisation NOC*NSF developed, together with one of the RIECs, an e-learning module on this topic, aimed at board members of all types of sport clubs. The Tax authority oversees the clubs’ income, and may conduct administrative inspections when it discovers fiscal irregularities. Cooperation with the police may be necessary when safety issues occur regarding matches, but such contacts are usually ad hoc and limited to the clubs that play in national amateur competitions (Bruinsma et al. 2019, 2020).

Interviewees noted several risk factors in the context of criminal infiltration (Bruinsma et al. 2019). First, the fact that local authorities and to a lesser extent the KNVB, at the time seemed to be less alert regarding the risk of criminal infiltration, but this changed after publication of scientific studies and media attention. Second, interviewees criticised the role of the KNVB for being too punitive in case of shortcomings at the club, which increased reluctance to seek the association’s assistance in cases of (potential) criminal infiltration (Bruinsma et al. 2019). Sport clubs fear that the football association, the municipality, or the police, will impose stricter supervision if they report indications of criminal infiltration and that this will result in a bad reputation (Bruinsma et al. 2020). To these observations we may add that even amateur football clubs can at the local level be considered ‘powerful actors.’ Several RIEC investigators) noted that particularly in small municipalities, few mayors and aldermen were inclined to take firm action against clubs upon indications of possible criminal infiltration as this would also affect ordinary members and undermine the clubs’ important social function in the city, village or neighbourhood (Bruinsma et al. 2018, 2020; see also Nelen 2015).

Tackling criminal infiltration

In the previous sections we identified several actors who have key responsibilities to prevent and tackle criminal infiltration at amateur football clubs: the clubs; the football association; the local authorities; the Tax authority and the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation service (FIOD); the police and public prosecution service, and platforms for multi-agency cooperation, specifically the RIECs. In this section, we first focus at adequate detection of criminal infiltration and attempts and reporting to the appropriate agencies, investigation of suspected persons and their involvement in amateur football clubs, and how to intervene. This section is based on empirical findings of studies by Bruinsma et al. (2019) and Bruinsma and colleagues (2020).

Prevention

Board members of amateur football clubs in North-Brabant and Zeeland noted that just a few relatively simple organisational measures may greatly reduce the risk of criminal infiltration (Bruinsma et al. 2019). To begin with, all loans and sponsorships should be based on written contracts, and cash payments should not be accepted. Next, they pointed out that clubs should prevent becoming dependent on just one or a few sponsors, but should seek a larger number of smaller sponsors. If one person then turns out to be involved in criminal activities, it will be easier to end the sponsoring relationship. When the club has the opportunity to bring in a sponsor who wants to provide substantial money, clubs should avoid unknown outsiders but instead choose larger companies that do not want to risk reputational damage. Obviously, setting realistic performance targets, with a long-term perspective, is also essential (Bruinsma et al. 2019). Still, Bruinsma and colleagues (2020) concluded that few clubs had implemented possible prevention measures, although clubs that had experienced criminal infiltration did respond with better prevention. Most clubs did, to the extent possible, perform background checks on the origin of the financial resources of sponsors or donors, but requiring a certificate of conduct from potential sponsors was uncommon. Least applied measures were to discuss criminal infiltration during board meetings or at the annual general members’ meeting and taking courses to learn more about the danger of criminal infiltration (Bruinsma et al. 2020). The KNVB, for instance encourages football clubs to develop and maintain good relations with other clubs in the region, with local authorities, the local police and the Tax authority. Clubs may also contact regional KNVB-advisors to report and discuss problems. Local authorities may set certain conditions laid down in operating permits, for instance regarding safety. Operators of canteens may be subject to screening based on the Public Administration (Probity Screening) Act, or BIBOB Act after its abbreviation in Dutch. Finally, the government has since 2018 introduced the instrument of local sports agreements, which aim at further development of a positive and safe sports culture. Although in 2020, few agreements addressed prevention against criminal infiltration (Bruinsma et al. 2020).

Detecting and reporting criminal infiltration and attempts

In the context of criminal infiltration, a distinction can be made between clubs that aim to prevent criminal infiltration and those that have shown to be receptive to it. The study by Bruinsma and colleagues (2020) has identified a number of indicators that may point at criminal infiltration, such as persons who appeared at the club and were known or suspected to be involved in criminal activities, or in conflict with the Tax authorities or municipality; persons who threatened board members, volunteers or members of the club; suspected persons who used the club as a meeting place or to conduct illegal activities; potential sponsors who wished to remain anonymous, only wanted to pay in cash, demanded a say in the clubs’ policies, and withdrew when the club declined their offer; and potential sponsors who appeared out of the blue. In total 19% of amateur football clubs that took part in the survey reported to have been confronted with one or more of these signals (Bruinsma et al. 2020). Most mentioned were unknown sponsors who offered to financially support the club; sponsors who only wanted to contribute in cash; suspicious persons who appeared at the club, without being a member; threats against people at the club, and rumours that volunteers or sponsors were involved in criminal activity. For clubs, detecting attempts at criminal infiltration is difficult, because they primarily associate the concept with organized drug crime and less with persons who appear to be running a legitimate business. As mentioned above, clubs’ board members are often reluctant to report criminal infiltration, or attempts, to authorities. They are more willing to do so when the risky situation is caused by non-members but less when it involves members who hold status within the sport club (Bruinsma et al. 2020). Furthermore, many respondents acknowledged not know to which authorities to turn. They may also underestimate the seriousness of the situation, fear that the persons involved may take revenge, or assume that institutions will be unable to properly follow-up upon reporting.

Interviewees from the RIECs stated that although attention for criminal infiltration in sports had been growing in recent years, the problem has hardly received separate attention (Bruinsma et al. 2020). Consequently, municipalities and enforcement agencies often have difficulties in detecting malicious practices when clubs are unwilling to report. Involvement of criminals in amateur football clubs mostly transpired when they had become suspects in investigations that focused on other illegal activities, but it was almost never a starting point for gathering intelligence or investigation. Neither did the RIECs conduct strategic intelligence analysis of football clubs in their region, although criminal involvement in sports may be noted in general threat analyses reports (Bruinsma et al. 2020). The same applied to the Tax authority, although it had run a project that focused on football clubs’ tax reports from 2013 to 2016 during which clubs were also informed about the risks of accepting cash payments from sponsors (Van Vooren 2018). In cases when the club’s board members themselves are unaware of criminal infiltration, authorities should be enabled to issue warnings, but in practice this is often hindered by privacy legislation or the need of secrecy because a case is still under investigation.

Interventions

In dealing with sport clubs that have accepted or even welcomed criminal infiltration governmental organizations obviously cannot collaborate with the club itself. When indications are serious, the RIECs usually collect information with their partners in order to determine which authority is best positioned to take up further investigation, or whether coordinated interventions may be preferrable (Bruinsma et al. 2018, 2020). In 2019, for example the Taskforce RIEC Brabant-Zeeland had 10 cases under investigation in the two southern provinces, which amounted to 3% of the total number of 374 amateur football clubs (Bruinsma et al. 2019). In 2020 the RIECs reported 40 cases concerning amateur football clubs in the Netherlands (Bruinsma et al. 2020). However, the result of RIEC investigations may also be that information is yet insufficient to warrant further action, and in such cases, the only option may be to wait for the criminals to make a mistake. RIECs may also call upon the KNVB to take action, but again exchanging information is difficult because of privacy legislation and the perceived risk that information might leak. Organizing comprehensive and adequate interventions and arranging sufficient manpower and resources is a main problem, and it may therefore take considerable time to stop criminal infiltration once it has been established.

Conclusion and discussion

This final section offers a brief theoretical reflection on criminal infiltration in sports, and amateur sports in particular. So far, criminological studies have focused mainly on corruption and money laundering in professional sports. Theoretically, this implies that criminals would mainly engage in sports from the perspective of rational choice, specifically because of opportunities to bet on manipulated games and to launder ‘black’ money. However, to better understand why criminals or persons with suspicious backgrounds engage in amateur sports, we need to also include other theoretical perspectives, in particular the interrelatedness of social embeddedness and status seeking. In our studies we did not observe criminal infiltration in amateur football clubs with the aim of receiving a direct return on investment in financial terms. Although in some cases small financial gains were observed, for instance the use of the clubs’ canteens to organise illegal activities such as poker tournaments, in almost all cases the clubs simply spent the money donated by the sponsors.

In the context of organised crime, the concept of social embeddedness is used to point at the fact that members of criminal groups interact with and depend upon their local and social environment (Van de Bunt et al. 2014). Hobbs (1998) for instance pointed at the ‘glocal’ character of illegal activities such as drug trafficking. Although such crimes may be highly international, most members of criminal cooperatives are found at the local or regional levels, within specific subcultures or extended criminal families (Kleemans and Van de Bunt 1999; Van de Bunt and Kleemans 2007; Spapens 2012; Van de Bunt et al. 2014; Spapens and Moors 2020). Furthermore, sponsors with suspicious backgrounds often succeed in posing as outwardly law-abiding members of the middle class, particularly when they are involved in white-collar crimes related to regulatory and fiscal offenses. Shady entrepreneurs, criminals and their family members are usually known in their local communities. Criminal families, for instance, ensure ‘walls of silence’ both through intimidation and philanthropy, the latter for instance by acting as ‘informal mayors’ and spokespersons for the neighbourhood and arranging things with the municipality such as housing and children’s playgrounds, but also by supporting individuals who experience setbacks (Moors and Spapens 2017; Bruinsma et al. 2018). Others, however choose to maintain a low profile but stand out because of their well-protected private homes, including heavy roller-shutters and CCTV-cameras. From a social network perspective, the latter may for instance be invited to donate money but do not wish to take up any position at the club.

As a sport, football attracts enthusiasts from all layers of society, and plays a significant role in shaping cultural identity, both at the national and local level. The Dutch football association has about 1.2 million members, which makes it the most important popular sport. Just as many other citizens, criminals like football, and if not, maybe their friends or children do. Few events outside football evoke similar collective emotions, except major disasters or the death of the most popular folk singers. This is most visible when the Dutch national team achieves success at a major international tournament, but euphoria may also run high when a local team wins a competition, whereas disappointing results may invoke chagrin. Particularly in small communities the local football club is a focal point of social life, and in cases studied in this paper many persons who raised suspicion held long-term connections with the club.

Sponsoring the local football club may therefore help to increase social acceptation, particularly when the extra money substantially improves the teams’ results. Furthermore, involvement in sports clubs may help to sow doubt about the individual’s motives and true character. People might reason that the person in question may not be a choirboy, but still has a good heart. Indeed, apart from financial motives, seeking status, respect, pleasure and excitement are equally important, particularly for successful crime entrepreneurs (Spapens and Van de Mheen 2022). They enjoy the ‘respect’ that follows from being known as a successful criminal and to some extent feared within their own social community or the criminal underworld (Amir 1989). The need for status, unlike the need for money, is unlimited (Storr 2021). Status may of course also be linked to money and the power derived from it. Expenditure on luxury goods and a luxury lifestyle as well as being ‘generous’ to people in their social environment can therefore be status-enhancing (Klerks 2000; Moors and Spapens 2017).

Although little is known about the effects of sponsoring sports clubs on a person’s status, research does show that engaging in philanthropy in general, does indeed produce positive social outcomes (Campopiano and De Massis 2015; Maung et al. 2020; Giacomin and Jones 2021). Philanthropical activities have also enhanced the public image of outlaw motorcycle gangs, even though the public is aware about their involvement in crime and violence (Kuldova 2018). Individual reputations may indeed be tainted by past convictions or rumours about involvement in crime, but as long as no (new) illegal activities have been proven, the positive image promoted by socially beneficial activities may prevail. Finally, increased social acceptation may potentially benefit legitimate business activities, for instance when the sponsors’ name appears on shirts, billboards and in the media. However, establishing whether such motives indeed drive criminals to sponsor football clubs and other activities beneficial to society would require further research.

Clubs’ board members are thus facing a dilemma. Amateur football clubs usually struggle to make financial ends meet, and may be responsive to sponsors even if they raise suspicion. For clubs, a criminal sponsor appears to offer substantial short-term benefits. Financial worries are alleviated and clubs where the main sponsor or well-respected chairman was later apprehended and convicted for serious offenses, or murdered, often enjoyed substantial sporting successes. In the long-term amateur football clubs are at great risk, both in terms of finances and reputation, and may lose members and players when criminal infiltration negatively affects the atmosphere at the club and people no longer want to be associated with it. Formally, a club that has a criminal sponsor in its ranks could itself be charged with money laundering, because it applies financial resources acquired from a criminal activity or from participation in such activity.

Finally, from a criminological perspective the involvement of criminal sponsors in sports and in a broader sense in activities beneficial to society has not yet received much attention, although there is ample reason to assume the problem affects other countries as well. A first limitation of the three studies however is their focus on the Netherlands, and results cannot be generalised to other countries. Second, the studies did not include the perspective of persons who were suspected of being criminal sponsors, and therefore their motives remain not entirely clear. Third, this paper focused on amateur football, whereas criminals may or may not be involved in other types of sports, and further research could explore why other types of sports may or may not be equally attractive for criminals. Finally, all three studies conducted were explorative and theory development in this particular field is required. Future research is therefore necessary to deepen our understanding of criminal involvement in such settings.