International Agreements Committee — hearing of 9 July 2026: transcript & video

00:06 - 01:48

Speaker 1

Wonderful, well good morning everyone and thank you very much for joining this inquiry into the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, which is better known as the Macolin Convention, particularly relevant in light of all the major sporting fixtures that are going on at the moment around the world. And I'm very pleased and I welcome on behalf of the committee our two witnesses today, Moses Swaibu, who was a famous former footballer and also now the founder and CEO of GameChanger360, who brings to this meeting an extremely high degree of understanding of the match-fixing problems that he encountered himself and how we can solve them. Moses, thank you very much for being with us in person, it's extremely good to have you with us. And joined online is Madalina Diaconu, the associate professor at University of Neuchâtel, who has made her business over the last few decades to build a high level of expertise and has contributed significantly to the drafting of this treaty and has a very good understanding of the legal ramifications of treaties such as this. So thank you very much indeed both of you for joining us.

My first question to Moses really is if you could talk briefly about your experience of match-fixing, which you've been open about and have written books about and talked about, and the broader systems behind it, both as a footballer and since. And I know this will be developed more in our discussion, but how you see the relevance of this treaty itself. So I think we accept the fact, and you've been a great advocate of this since the situation of some years ago, of removing or reducing corruption in sport. But is this treaty a useful way of going about doing that? And again, thank you for joining us and we look forward to hearing your views.

01:48 - 03:05

Speaker 2

Yeah, thank you all for having me. So I think before I start, my journey into professional sports started when I was 16. I was a young boy playing for my school at the time. I got into Crystal Palace, 16 years old, went for a trial. So this is quite relevant to the conversation we're having today.

I never had no education in regards to frameworks, how to deal with certain issues. And from me going to a public school in Croydon to now going into an elite environment, there was quite a shift and a change on the geographical location of where I'm coming from and the community and more importantly me going into an environment of mentors, structures, big brothers and discipline. So whilst I had that framework, I was very well endowed to adapt into scenarios. So I'm travelling from London Bridge to East Croydon every day in a generation where there wasn't any social media, so it was very much an old school stylistic way of how we were able to navigate through London at that time. So it wasn't until I actually left Crystal Palace, I've moved to Lincoln City, and at 19, I believe, was my first real interaction with life and society outside of London.

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