The rejected appeal cannot be overturned, however the court may again rule later on whether to continue his detention in jail after an alleged game-throwing ring uncovered last week by the State Police working in cooperation with Interpol, the Latvian Football Federation (LFF) and European Association of Football Federations (UEFA) prompted the arrest of eight persons including Gavrilovs.
Gavrilovs headed the Dinaburg team until 2009, when he was disbarred for life from the world of professional Latvian football for previous ethical irregularities. But since the Dinaburg team was merged into Daugava, Gavrilovs has been a fixture at virtually every game.
Club director Edgars Limans told LETA that head coach Ivan Tabanov from Moldova and players Aleksandrs Vlasovs and Jeveņijs Kosmačovs had also been detained.
Both the Daugava club and its predecessor Dinaburg have long been associated with alleged game-throwings at both local and European levels, based on tips from totalizer monitoring agency Federbet. In 2009 both Gavrilovs and head coach Tamaz Pertija were disqualified for life from Latvian football, but Pertija’s ban was lifted and he now trains the SMScredit.lv League’s champions Riga’s Skonto.
LFF president Guntis Indriksons told LETA that the recent arrests are just the halfway point in exposing the ‘plague’ of game-throwing in the sport. “At the last two LFF congresses I have said that we must put an end to this, or at least reduce it to a minimum,” said Indriksons, adding that the jailing of one person would not be enough, however.
