Matvii Bidnyi: "Our greatest challenge is to protect sports from fraud and corruption"
11/13/2024
On November 8, the members of the National Platform of Sports Integrity held a meeting with representatives of the Ukrainian Volleyball Federation.
In his welcoming speech at the opening of the meeting the Minister of Youth and Sports of Ukraine, Head of the National Platform of Sports Integrity Matvii Bidnyi paid great attention to the area of sports integrity in the Ministry's activities.
Manipulations is sport, especially match-fixing, destroy sport by undermining the integrity of competitions, creating risks for athletes, especially young ones, and eroding trust in sporting values. Ukraine, which was one of the first to ratify the Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, and later established the National Platform of Sports Integrity, is a recognized member of the international community in preserving the purity and transparency of sports. I am confident that only through joint efforts with the sports community we achieve the best results in the area of sports integrity,
emphasised the Minister.
In his turn, President of the Ukrainian Volleyball Federation Mykhailo Melnyk noted that although their national federation has not had any recent cases of manipulation of sports competitions, he stressed the importance of educating of young athletes before they start their professional careers, to protect them from the harmful effects of ‘easy’ money.
Oleksii Perevezentsev, First Vice President of the NOC of Ukraine, Deputy Chairman of the National Platform of Sports Integrity, informed about the measures of the International Olympic Committee developed specifically to combat the manipulation of sports competitions at the international and national levels, recalling the Code of the Olympic Movement Code on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competitions and the importance of integrating its provisions into the regulatory documents of sports organisations.
Nataliia Radchuk, Secretary of the National Platform of Sports Integrity, Head of the Department of International Cooperation and European Integration of the Ministry of Youth and Sports presented the legal framework and main tasks of the Interagency Working Group, which brings together representatives of government agencies, sports-related NGOs and the private sector. She informed about the results of the National Platform's work in 2023-2024, in particular the statistics of the Interagency Working Group's review of alerts on violations of sport integrity, and stressed the importance of reporting any violations of integrity in sport, even if at first glance they may not seem significant.
We remind you that you can always report about the manipulation of sports competitions on the website of the National Platform of Sports Integrity ABSOLUTELY ANONYMOUSLY.