http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/...mission-orders-interviews-20110114-19r6q.html
AN INVESTIGATION into a huge betting plunge on an NRL game last season will take a dramatic twist with persons of interest to be hauled before the NSW Crime Commission, which carries the threat of jail sentences for those who refuse to appear or answer questions.
The matter, which concerns unusual betting activity on the August 21 match between North Queensland and Canterbury in Townsville, has been in the hands of the NSW Police Crime Command Casino and Racing Investigation unit since September.
Cowboys and Bulldogs players, as well as punters, are among those to have been interviewed by detectives since the NRL referred the case to police. It was anticipated the investigation would be wound up by early next month but the inquiry is instead expected to intensify with the significant powers of the NSW Crime Commission invoked.
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The
Herald has been told ''key individuals'' allegedly implicated in suspicious betting on the game - specifically on the usually exotic option of the Cowboys as first scorers with a penalty goal - are to be questioned in private coercive hearings run by the Commission, which has much greater powers than police investigators. Among them is the ability to compel witnesses to give evidence and produce documents, and fines or jail terms of up to two years for those who refuse. There are sentences of up to five years, upon conviction, for giving false or misleading evidence.
The trade-off is that answers provided by anyone summoned before the hearings will not be admissible in evidence in later criminal proceedings against them, with the aim to encourage witnesses to ''roll over'' on alleged conspirators.
The betting scandal tainted the closing stages of the last NRL season, with the events of the first two minutes of the Cowboys-Bulldogs round 24 fixture placed under the microscope following reports from bookmaking agencies of bizarre pre-game trends. Before the match between two clubs out of finals contention there was a deluge of bets placed on the Cowboys to open the scoring with a penalty goal.
Two minutes after the kick-off, the Canterbury front-rower Ryan Tandy was penalised for lying on a Cowboys player in a tackle directly in front of the Bulldogs' posts. A penalty was awarded but the Cowboys turned down the kick, with hooker Anthony Watts taking a quick tap and spinning the ball wide to score a try in the left corner.
Tandy's manager, Sam Ayoub, placed a bet on the Cowboys penalty goal option, as did Tandy's friend Michael Cook, with CCTV footage from the Duke of Gloucester Hotel in Randwick showing Cook placing the wager. Another of Ayoub's clients, 20-year-old Parramatta halfback Brad Murray, was shown on CCTV footage placing a bet on the first-scoring play at a TAB outlet inside a Flemington hotel on August 19.
Those bets do not imply any wrongdoing, and Ayoub and Tandy have strongly denied any involvement in an illegal betting plunge. Tandy, in his only media interview since the scandal broke, told the
Herald and Channel Nine he had not deliberately conceded the penalty.
''I'm not involved 100 per cent, no way,'' he said on August 27. ''Obviously you're not allowed to bet on rugby league
being a rugby league player, so there is no way I'd do that. Second of all, I'd never jeopardise my team like that anyway.''
It is expected that Ayoub and Tandy will be among those called to appear before the Commission as people who could assist with the inquiry. A spokeswoman for Police Minister Michael Daley, who is on the committee that refers matters to the Commission, would not comment.
