2023-09-21

EUROPE - Elite European football has been overrun with advertisements for Asian betting brands in recent years, despite many of these companies being connected to major organised crime figures.

Enabled by a leading European regulator and marketing firms spreading disinformation, many clubs are promoting companies linked to South-East Asia’s cyber scam industry - where the business model is built on human trafficking, modern-day slavery and exploitation of the vulnerable. 

Vision of a young man attempting to escape a suspected “cyber slavery” compound in Cambodia has cast a sickening shadow over Manchester City’s historic success last season. Filmed hours after the club won its latest Premier League trophy, it shows a man running for his life from Kim Sa, a compound in a Cambodian bordertown that is one of South East Asia’s hotspots for industrial scale cyber crime and modern-day slavery. 

Manchester City sponsor 8XBet has been linked to the compound - which has been described as  “the most notorious in Cambodia”. Shockingly, it’s not the town’s only cyber slavery compound - nor its only connection to elite European football.

Team members

Philippe Auclair

Philippe Auclair (UK) is a football writer, broadcaster and investigative journalist.

Philippe Auclair

Jack Kerr

Jack Kerr (Australia) is a data and OSINT journalist.

Jack Kerr

Steve Menary

Steve Menary is a British journalist specialised in sports.

 

Steve Menary

Andy Brown

Andy Brown is a freelance UK journalist who has been covering sports for over 15 years. 

Andy Brown
Supported
€15.000,00 allocated on 12/09/2023
ID
ECB/2023/820

ONLINE

need resources for your own investigative story?

Journalismfund Europe's flexible grants programmes enable journalists to produce relevant public interest stories with a European mind-set from international, national, and regional perspectives.

Apply

support independent cross-border investigative journalism

We rely on your support to continue the work that we do. Make a gift of any amount today.

Donate