CAS 2018/A/5800 Samir Arab v. Union Européenne de Football Association (UEFA), Award of 14 November 2018

This case is a part of a complex trial concerning a match-fixing plot in Maltese football. The context of this affair involves a match-fixing criminal group with ramifications in Europe and Asia, which were approaching young players of the Maltese U-21 national team, offering them EUR 3,000 to fix certain UEFA U-21 Championship matches, for betting purposes. One of these players, Samir Arab, failed to inform the relevant bodies of such repeated approaches. Although he later collaborated with the judicial authorities, the UEFA CEDB found him guilty of “failure to report” (Article 12(2)(d) UEFA DR) and banned him from football activities for approximately two years. However, the UEFA Appeals Body changed the legal qualification of the offence into “active match-fixing” (Article 12(2)(a) UEFA DR), while maintaining the same ban. The CAS dismissed the Player’s appeal, stating mainly that a sanction imposed by a disciplinary body in the exercise of its discretion, as allowed by the relevant rules, could be reviewed only when such sanction was evidently and grossly disproportionate to the offence, which was not the case here. Besides this, the Player could not benefit from a reduction of the sanction based on the concept of “substantial assistance”. Finally, the CAS reminded us that the res iudicata principle, as enshrined in Swiss law, limits the discretion of appeals bodies to re-examine the case and does not allow them to change the legal qualification of the offence into “active match-fixing”, instead of the lesser grave “failure to report”.