Scandal Shakes Turkish Football: Did Millions of Liras Buy Match Result Manipulation?

Istanbul's public prosecutor has filed serious charges against Turkish Super League referees Yasin Kol and Goktug Hazar Erel, relating to the forgery of official documents and sports result manipulation. The investigation resulted in Kol's arrest and referral to the on-duty criminal judge of peace, while assistant Erel was sent to prison on charges of forging an official document.

Financial Investigation Path and Figures

A review of bank accounts linked to forty-four IBAN numbers, along with analysis of digital correspondence and match schedules, revealed massive cash flows. The initial value of suspicious transfers was estimated at approximately 135 million Turkish liras; however, precise auditing that excluded duplicate entries reduced this figure to 84 million and 181 thousand liras.

These final amounts were distributed primarily between two parts: the first amounted to about 34.5 million liras resulting from transfers between Kol's personal accounts and among themselves, and the second included around 49.5 million liras transferred to third parties outside his direct account scope.

Temporal Correlation with Match Times

Forensic evidence focused on the temporal synchronization between financial transactions and the match times involving the concerned referees. Investigations recorded fifty financial operations linked to referees who worked in the same meetings, where these transfers occurred within a specific time window starting three days before the match kickoff and ending two days after it.

Of the fifty operations, forty-seven were transfers sent directly by Kol to other referees. In forty-four of these cases, Kol was the main referee for the match, while the recipients were assistant or fourth officials. Notably, forty of these 47 transfers were actually executed after the start of the match, reinforcing suspicions regarding the link between payments and performance on the field.

Statistical Analysis to Rule Out Coincidence

The file underwent rigorous statistical examination to determine whether this temporal alignment was random. When applying simulation models by shifting the match schedule forward or backward in various ways, the average number of transfers coinciding with the same periods reached only 3.71 operations. In contrast, the actual number in the real schedule reached fifty operations, a significant difference that rules out luck.

The technical report concluded that this high concentration of financial operations is closely related to match times rather than a random distribution of events. However, experts noted that banking data alone did not specify the ultimate purpose or nature of services exchanged for these payments, leaving room for further judicial interrogations to uncover the secrets of the "Referees File" that shook the sporting circles in Turkey.