Similar communications of three competing betting operators reinforced suspicions of card market manipulation, or “spot-fixing”, according to the Federal Police investigation that resulted in the indictment of striker Bruno Henrique, Flamengo, last Monday (14).
The agency also stated that two sports integrity companies concluded by the same analysis of suspicion of fraud in the match in which the player acted. One of these reports said it caused concern from the point of view of integrity, the volume of bets for Bruno Henrique to receive a card.
Asked, Bruno Henrique’s staff said he will not speak. THE Sheet He could not contact his family members, also indicted.
Another would have reported the occurrence of nine bets of the maximum amount in this regard in approximately three hours, most of them from newly created accounts.
The location of the gamblers also caught the operator’s attention for the great concentration of bets based in Belo Horizonte, city of Bruno Henrique.
According to one of the operators, 98% of card market bets were directed to the athlete, which made it, for suspicion of handling, to suspend the offer of this market a day before the game.
One of them would have offered the probability of 32% success for Bruno to receive a card in the match, considering the receipt, until that moment, of seven yellow cards by the athlete in the previous 38 matches played.
“Logic aspects could not explain the abnormal interest of gamblers in receiving card by Bruno Henrique,” the document says.
The report pointed to the hypothesis of prior knowledge of the gamblers in receiving cards by the athlete, “which also presupposes, from this point of view, its participation and its direct or indirect binding with the gamblers.”
Also according to police, one of the companies suspended the payment of the awards due to the suspicion of fraud, post-game and subsequent days, reaching in some cases until months later, with several conversations on the subject.
PF obtained conversations between the player and his brother, Wander Nunes Pinto Junior, who pointed to an alleged combination for the receipt of yellow card, in the match against Santos, in early November 2023, for the Brazilian Championship, to make a profit in bets.
“It is important to emphasize that, if the hypothesis is true, the prior knowledge of gamblers in receiving a card by Bruno Henrique in the match Flamengo and Santos presupposes, as logic, both the active participation of the player in the process and a binding between the parties, ie between athlete and gamblers,” said the PF.
Other messages by Wander with family and friends reports his concern for the suspension of premium transfers related to this bet.
In one of them, he asks a friend if one of the companies has already paid, and has a negative answer: “Nothing fagot.” Following, the interlocutors question the fact that the company did not pay the Award for Bet to Bruno Henrique’s card.
In one of the excerpts from the conversation Wander asks, “Investigation of what?” And later it states, “Go out of nothing.”
For the PF, WhatsApp’s conversations held between the athlete and the brother “point out that he would have expressly provided privileged information to his brother about receiving a card in the match under investigation.”
In November 2024, the athlete was one of the targets of an operation of PF and Gaeco (Special Action Group to combat organized crime), the Federal District Prosecutor’s Office, related to bets on a card of the player who would have been made by relatives of the athlete.
In addition to the Flamengo player, Brother Wander and eight others were indicted. In the group is the wife of her brother, Ludymilla Araujo Lima, and a cousin of the athlete, named Poliana Ester Nunes Cardoso. The three would have made card -related bets, in a game against Santos for the 2023 Brazilian Championship.
The Federal Police said they will not comment on the case.
In a statement, Flamengo stated that it was not officially communicated. “The club is committed to compliance with the rules of sports fair play, but also defends the application of the constitutional principle of presumption of innocence and due process of law, with emphasis on contradictory and broad defense, values that support the democratic rule of law,” says the text.
