Human Trafficking in and Through Football: Case Studies Involving “Fake Agents”
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Human Trafficking in and through Football: case studies involving “fake agents” Background It is a well know fact that the game of football and the successes of its players have instigated a growing aspiration within youngsters all over the world. The need to develop such young talents have led to the recruitment young boys, and increasingly girls, in many parts of the Global South, namely on the African and Latin American continents. In the same light, it has also increased the motivation of traffickers to prey on aspiring young talents who often lack the opportunities that some of the peers in the Western world possess. In 2015, an article in the international press claimed that 15,000 young players were moved from West Africa yearly under false pretence.1 The hidden nature of the crime means that the number could be higher. In Belgium, 442 cases of ‘African soccer slaves’ were uncovered by Senator Jean Marie Dedecker when he exposed the illegal trade in Nigerian players within European football2. When moving alone to unknown places, children are always in danger of becoming victims of crimes like human trafficking and other forms of slavery. Illicit recruitment agents use the world of football to make money by faking contracts and luring young African players to migrate to Europe under illegal conditions, only to abandon them as soon as they can. Even though sometimes the athletes migrate through legal routes, they end up becoming illegal by overstaying their visas.3 In some cases, young people are given short-term visas and contracts for trials with clubs in Europe, entering the destination country even by airplane, often paid for by the hard-earned money borrowed or given to them by their immediate or extended families. In some cases, these “fake agents” work in networks with people from visa offices and other relevant intermediate links. Several of these practices by “fake agents” are illustrated through the examples in the next section. 1 Guilbert, K. "Chasing dreams: Young African footballers duped, dumped by traffickers." Reuters Africa, Retrieved from http://af. reuters. com/article/sportsNews/idAFKBN0TQ0IS 20151207 (2015). 2Esson, James, and Eleanor Drywood. "Challenging popular representations of child trafficking in football." Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice (2018). 3 Esson, pg. 512-530. Case Study 1: Olawale Sunday At age 21, Wale left Nigeria in 2013, having paid $3350 to a rogue agent who had promised him a trial with an unnamed club in Russia, a destination now revered among African football circles for its generous financial rewards.4 Accompanied by a group of similar recruits, they arrived in Dubai and were each given one- way tickets to Dushanbe, where they were then met by a Ghanaian merchant-of-sorts: “Charles [the Ghanaian] met us off the plane and told us we would play for Lokomotiv Dushanbe,” Quite why Charles was in Tajikistan was never properly explained, although his role in assuring the young players upon reaching Dushanbe, with hindsight, appears crucial in the process: “Charles married a Tajik girl so he is stuck there forever,” Wale reveals as if discussing a lengthy period of incarceration. “He uses players as slaves.” After three months at Lokomotiv, Wale decided to break free and move north, having received a recommendation from his friend, Ebeneezer, who had arranged a trial with Alga, a team from Kyrgyzstan’s capital. Having organized his Kyrgyz visa independently, Wale then paid $60 to board a marshrutka (minibus) for two days, crossing several high-risk mountain passes, before reaching Bishkek, but not without the ubiquitous struggle most foreigners encounter with Central Asian bureaucracy: “I was detained on the Tajik-Kyrgyz border for several hours, for no reason,” he says Wale’s difficulties were never openly discussed, out of an element of embarrassment and perhaps shame, as he has never to this day received any form of remuneration from either club he has played for during his time in Central Asia. Case Study 2: Matthew Edafe Matthew was from a small city in Nigeria, a country that has produced generations of soccer stars now known around the world: Jay Jay Okocha, Sunday Oliseh, Samson Siasia, Celestine Babayaro, Nwankwo Kanu, John Obi Mikel. “He showed some photos he had taken with white people,” explains Edafe, today. “I don’t know how they do that — maybe it’s Photoshop — to show that they had the opportunity to travel. “They bring a document that says they want to take 30 young players abroad; that for the very first game you play, any game, a trial match or whatever, they will give you $2000. When you sign the contract you will start earning anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000. “The only thing that comes into your head during all that is the exchange rate from dollars to [Nigerian] naira. It is a question of your dream versus your reality. The person who is speaking looks well fed. You don’t even ask a question. “The African is brought up to respect and not question their elders. The elders are not supposed to lie. The elders are supposed to be a paradigm of knowledge and honesty and 4 https://thediplomat.com/2015/09/selling-dreams-along-the-silk-road/ 1 wisdom. So the question is, how do I get myself onto this list of 30 players? Then the agent comes up with a ‘contribution’ you have to make, ranging from $2200 to USD$5000. “People who are desperate then get more desperate, and sell their property, family land, houses, parents’ cars, to get on this team. But the agent says that we’re scheduled to play about 30 games so you will get the money back and more.” He was told that once he paid the required fee, he would travel to Spain with the “team” of other young Nigerian hopefuls. Matches and a trial with a team in Spain’s second division would await. This was the big chance. There was no choice to make. “My mother borrowed a lot of money,” Edafe explains. “She tried to make sure I made something out of life. We were really from the slum. Really poor people.” But this journey would be no luxury trip, the way many professional footballers travel in the first class section of a jet or on comfortable air-conditioned VIP buses. With 22 other players, Edafe left Nigeria for Senegal before heading for Cape Verde — by boat. There, on the island, they were promised a training camp to prepare for Spain According to Edafe, after four days on Cape Verde, some white men, speaking a language none of the players understood, came by to watch the Nigerians train. They left without speaking to the boys. So, too, did the agent. Just like that. The “team” was soon tossed from its hotel (prostitutes were among the other guests, Edafe recalls) and the players worked out what might have seemed obvious to others. There was no deal, no game, no tour, no plan, no money, and most of all, no agent. Edafe was stuck in Cape Verde for 11 months. He says he lived on the street and did all kinds of jobs before he met a local girl who introduced him to her father. That earned him a job in a boatyard and led to a trip back to Nigeria on a ship. “I was 20 years old in a strange land,” says Edafe. “We heard on the street that this is what normally happens. I thought I would never see my family again. I didn’t know what to do. I lost a chance to further my education and I lost a chance to play football. I was in a daze. There was no going forward. There was no going back.” 2 Case Study 3: P. (Pseudonym) In 2015, P. was a 17-year old Senegalese boy, whose ambition, like many others around him is to become a professional footballer in Europe. In tournaments played locally in Dakar, he emerged as one of the most talented youngsters.5 Sometime during that year, he was approached by a man (intermediary) who boasted of contacts with several European clubs. The sway of promises for a trial (try-out) in a European professional football club proves too difficult for P. to resist Initially, P’s mother was against it: the risks of betting everything on football was too high, especially in a distant and unknown country in Europe. The intermediary leveraged P.'s expectations and created friction between P. and his mother. Ultimately, P.'s mother was convinced and consented to her son's departure. She also paid a sum requested by the self-styled football agent, an act which she never revealed to P. Eventually, P. leaves for Italy, arriving in via the regular route by plane. Upon landing at Fiumicino Airport in Rome, several signs of started to alarm P. First of all, when P. calls the agent from Fiumicino to inform him of his arrival, he seems surprised. "Unbelievable! You made it to Italy!" seems to be the gist of the phone conversation, which heightens P’s suspicion that the so-called agent who had already collected a sum of money from his mother in Dakar, was part of a wider scam that did not envisage for P. to make it this far. From Rome, where he landed, P. reached the man he is supposed to meet in Milan Central Station not without difficulty, since this is his first experience being in a country totally different from his own, and the only language he speaks fluently is Wolof.