Building capacities and skills: NOCs and IFs in action

Despite 2024 having been an Olympic year with many other activities going on, the OM Unit PMC, together with its partners at INTERPOL, the Council of Europe and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), this year engaged with more than 1,500 representatives from sports organisations, law enforcement, state authorities and prosecution in more than 10 locations. The aim was to help them build capacities and skills within their own organisations, facilitate collaboration with other stakeholders involved, and thereby empower them to prevent and fight competition manipulation at national level. A special series of capacity-building activities for NOCs were also organised during the Paris 2024 Games.

Two key events held over the last few months in cooperation with INTERPOL showcase the power of cross-sector collaboration in this important field:

National platforms for better coordination

A full-day workshop held in Prague, Czech Republic, on 16 October, brought together 50 representatives from NOCs together with law enforcement and state authorities from six countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia). The focus was on promoting cooperation among these key stakeholders, and in particular on creating national platforms to better coordinate and streamline efforts to prevent, combat and investigate competition manipulation in the participating countries. Starting to “walk the talk”, the participants also engaged in hypothetical case scenarios.

“As I’m new to my role as an integrity expert at my NOC, this workshop helped me to further understand the phenomenon of competition manipulations and the relevant activation framework for NOCs,” commented Jan Rotta from the Czech NOC. He added: “We are already working on relevant rules and ongoing awareness-raising activities. The interaction with law enforcement and public authorities also provided a good basis for the start of closer cooperation among all relevant stakeholders in this field and in our country.”

From Europe to Asia

A similar, but larger-scale event was held from 5 to 7 December 2024 in Bangkok, Thailand, aimed at all Asian NOCs through close cooperation with the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), as well as a number of law enforcement and state representatives from certain countries of the region. With the participation of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and several of its National Federations (NFs), all from Asia, basketball served as a case study in several discussions. During both plenary and break-out sessions the different types of stakeholders could meet with their counterparts from other countries to exchange best practice, discuss challenges and share lessons learnt.

On the second day, participants were split into small groups and had to work together on hypothetical case scenarios. NOCs, law enforcement and state authority representatives had to approach each case from both a sports disciplinary and a criminal perspective.

The workshop was part of the OCA’s initiative to protect the integrity of the Asian Games. The NOC SPOCs (Single Points of Contact for Integrity) will be serving as accredited PMC officers during the Asian Games.

Jamyang Namgyal, OCA Athletes’ Department manager and PMC SPOC for the OCA, said: “It was a pleasure to work with the OM Unit PMC and INTERPOL in the delivery of such an event. The workshop helped all Asian NOCs to further understand the issue, and thanks to their on-going activities and understanding, and with their physical presence at the Asian Games, we are confident that the Asian Games are protected better than ever in relation to such threats.”

Learning from each other

Aiym Zhetybayeva, SPOC from the NOC of Kazakhstan, added: “This workshop helped me further consolidate my knowledge on the phenomenon. I am very much inspired by some good practices shared and I look forward to implementing what I learned and follow the example of other NOCs. At the same time, I had the chance to closely discuss with the prosecution office representative from my country who joined the event. We will be cooperating also in relation to ensuring that the national law is well equipped to tackle competition manipulation, and we will stand ready to work together if a case comes up in our country.”

Benjamin Schindler, Senior Legal Affairs Manager and PMC SPOC of FIBA, highlighted: “At FIBA, it is our objective to set up a global network of NF SPOCs on the prevention of manipulation of competitions. Following up on our work in Europe, this IOC-INTERPOL-OCA workshop helped us make a solid first step towards the development of such a network among the Asian basketball NFs, which will definitely contribute greatly to safeguarding the integrity of basketball competitions in this region. More workshops of this type are already being planned across all continents in 2025. First stops will be in the Caribbean and Western Africa.”