Contemporary Intelligence Corruption

Question: What form of corruption did you identify as emergent in your sport of choice? List the 5?10 key factors that led you to assess it as the emergent form of corruption and discuss their relevance and/or significance. Answer: Introduction Corruption can be referred as the misuse of funds and powers for realising personal gains and profits. It means having dishonest conduct and fraud and also includes theft or manipulation of facts. Corruption is spread nowadays everywhere and in almost every country but there are dilemmas between what is legal and illegal. There is a fine line between acceptable and unacceptable actions of corruption. This report contains a new phenomenon which is corruption in sports in Australia. Recently, sports in Australia has seen many illegal activities like match fixing or doping, which are just the examples of emergent corruption in the Australian sports. Body Context Match fixing and illegal sports has become a big threat to the reliability of sports in Australia and there are many attempts made for exploiting the players, coaches or umpires to fix the match. This emergent corruption is seen in the game of Table Tennis in Australia. Corruption is seen in the form of gambling, match fixing or doping in Table Tennis. The actual extent of the corruption in Australian sports is not clear. There are some events which shook the sports of Australia in recent years and which led to its assessment as the emergent form of corruption (Smith, 2010). Corruption comes in categories in sports. It can be match fixing, doping or misuse of information for betting purposes. The factors that led to the corruption in Australian Table Tennis are: Huge money earned by the game: Table Tennis is the game which is loved by all and the game has many sponsors and investors which led to the generation of huge amount of money. This generated money is now misused by the official and is flowed into the illegal channels which led to match fixing activities (Shleifer and Vishny, 2009). Greed for money: The greed for money makes the players and other people including in betting involve into these activities which spreads corruption at a good speed. Corruption established its foot with such a great intensity which is hard to be eradicated from the Australian Table Tennis and from the Table Tennis game of the world. Human beings are the species whose greed does not end at any point of time. Honest people are shadowed by those who are involved into the activities to make huge amount of money and that too through illegal means (Goel, 2010). The environment: The environment of the game plays a very important role in enhancing the chances of corruption in the game of Table Tennis or in any other game. The closed environment gives strength to players and other people to get engaged in such activities because there is no such strong regulation and sometimes the government or the other governing boards and bodies are themselves sharing the contribution in the amounts which are generated in the corruption activities (Dimofte et al., 2012). Salary amounts: The government provides minimum salary to the sport players and the other officials which lead them and encourage them to engage into such activities. In the local and national Table Tennis tournaments, the salaries provided by the Table Tennis board are at such a lower amount which encourages the players to participate in the match fixing schemes. Integrity: Integrity can be referred as to the quality of honesty or degree of honesty of people which determines his/her state of participating into the illegal or corrupting activities. If the person is honest and high in integrity, there would be no or fewer chances of involvement of the person in the corruption activities and in the illegal activities like betting or match fixing (Ewoh, 2013). This factor is important because it shows the possibility of the officials, administrators or other stakeholders to get involved into the gambling or any other corruption activities in the game of Table Tennis. The scope of gambling or illegal activities: Match fixing activities are under the security check of government and media also has attention on it nationally and internationally. It depend that how strong the government or media is in controlling the corruption and legal activities. If the scope is wide, the corruption spreads at a rapid rate and if the control of government is strong, the scope of emerging of corruption activities will be low. Advancement of technology and communications: The advancement of communication and technology allow the people to engage into the corruption activities. It helps the gamblers to place the bets on the matches and its results. It also helps in determining the gamblers that whether the particular outcome will occur or not in a Table Tennis match. These bets can be known as exotic bets which enhance the potential of corruption activities in the industry of Table Tennis sport (Marjit et al., 2014). The emergence of digital technologies at a rapid speed reduced the national boundaries between the nations and the betting cases and illegal activities in the Australian Table Tennis have seen a large increase. Different innovative products and technologies have made betting and other illegal activities convenient and easy for the gamblers. These may include online channels where the gamblers can communicate with each other and this trend is ever increasing in the future because technology is i ncreasing and improving day by day (Aghion et al., 2016). Criminal issues: Sports now have become a platform for criminal activities. People are betting and fixing matches and manipulating the results of the games which makes them enable to earn the profits which are actually illegal (Herrmann, 2012). There are also strong links between the illegal sports gambling and match fixing activities which needs strong government controls to stop the same. These gambling and illegal activities are not only against the main motive of sportsmanship and gaming but also lead to many criminal incidents which are against the real spirit of sports and games. One such example is of the central allegation in the Table Tennis matches in Australia in 2007 in which three matches at Wimbledon are showed in files but there are no such evidences of those matches. Also some suspicious betting activities were found after the game took place between Nikolay Davydenko and Martin Vassallo Arguello. The allegations from these two players were cleared but the investigation was carried on for the long time. Around 16 core group players claimed to have been losing their games when the betting activities were suspected. It was claimed that around 35000 was offered to the players to fix the games (Barcham, et. al., 2012). Conclusion Much can be done to remove corruption from sports in the country but it needs involvement from everyone. There should be openness in the decisions and the policies made. It should be clear to all that what policies are made and how. Anti corruption measures can be adopted in the code of conduct and constitutions. The government can start open bidding processes which prevents corruption by people. Fairness in bids need to be monitored. Ethical in sports can be promoted by the sponsors of the sports events as a part of corporate responsibility programmes taken by them. Media also has a power to awareness among people for the eradication of corruption from the sports. The sports sector can be corruption free if these solutions can be applied. References Smith, T. H. (2010). Corruption: The abuse of entrusted power in australia. Albert Park, Vic: Australian Collaboration. Shleifer, A., Vishny, R. W. (1993). corruption. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108(3), 599-617. doi:10.2307/2118402 Barcham, M., Hindess, B., Larmour, P. (2012). Corruption: Expanding the focus. Canberra, A.C.T: ANU E Press. Mugarura, N. (2010). The effect of corruption factor in harnessing global anti-money laundering regimes. 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