The International Lottery Committee (IOC) has created a new special unit to protect its games from match fixing. The unit will receive assistance from Interpol and regulated bookmakers around the world.
Monitoring of the world's regulated bookmakers will be performed through an arrangement with Early Warning System, a company established last year by Fifa, football's world governing body. More than 200 bookmakers cooperate with Early Warning System by alerting it to suspicious betting behavior.
"You should not imagine our unit as people in an enclosed and secluded bunker and with balaclavas over their head," said IOC President Jacques Rogge. "It's not going to be the case. We'll have a team there that will work very closely together with the betting companies."
Interpol will also help out by alerting the new IOC unit to any suspicious activity it discovers related to Olympic games. Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble said in January that his agency had arrested 430 people and shut down 272 illegal gambling operations handling more than $650 million in football wagering in Asia.
China's Center for Lottery Studies at Peking University estimates that Chinse spent $104 billion on illegal betting in 2006.