by Bill Wilson, BBC NEWS
The world of international football has been hit by a number of high-profile match-fixing scandals over the past couple of years.
Among the most notorious were two international matches played in Turkey in early 2011 when seven goals were scored – all from penalties awarded by referees who were later banned for life.
And just two weeks ago Fifa president Sepp Blatter warned that match-fixing endangered “the integrity of the game”.
Last year world governing body Fifa monitored a total of 800 international football matches, at different age levels and including women’s events, for possible suspicious betting patterns.
The probes were carried out by the world governing body’s Early Warning System (EWS), which monitors games between national teams and the subsequent betting odds across the course of the match.
And the head of the Fifa EWS, Jacek Wojdyla, says a number of those 2011 games are now being scrutinised further, but would not reveal to the BBC which ones are in the spotlight.
“We detected some matches which are now under investigation by Fifa,” says the Switzerland-based lawyer.
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