Match-fixing is not a crime in Romania. That is the gap a bill now before the Senate is trying to close, by writing “manipulation of sporting competitions” into the Penal Code with a sentence of two to eight years, as reported by Knews.media.

The sponsor, USR deputy Brian Cristian, has 38 co-signatories, drawn mostly from his own party with some from PNL and PSD. Prosecutors currently frame fixed matches as fraud or corruption, categories that were written for something else and sit awkwardly on sport.

In the bill’s explanatory text, Cristian argues the absence of an explicit offence makes it harder for judges “to delimit the material element of the offence; to administer specific evidence (betting, result influence); and to consistently penalise all participants in the criminal mechanism”, according to Golazo.ro.

Rejected by one commission, pushed to another

An earlier, lighter version of the bill, with sentences from six months to four years, was thrown out by the Senate’s Legal Commission on 22 October 2026, even though two other commissions had approved it.

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Cristian accused the commission of shielding, in his words, “the mafia of betting”. He told Golazo.ro that the Romanian state could no longer close its eyes to fixed matches and that parliament had to give prosecutors “the necessary legal tools to stop criminal networks and send offenders to prison, not become a shield for those destroying sporting competitions”.

The newer version, filed in the Senate at the end of October with the harsher two-to-eight-year range, is sometimes called “Legea Antiblat 2”. It still has to clear a Senate plenary vote before moving to the Chamber of Deputies, which has the final say.

Two live cases hanging over the debate

In February 2026, Romanian police carried out 34 house searches and brought in 21 people for questioning in connection with alleged match-fixing in Liga 3, the country’s third tier.

In the top flight, CFR Cluj midfielder Damjan Djokovic and the club’s lawyer Ioan Ivașcu have been under investigation by the Romanian Football Federation’s integrity department. The focus is a yellow card Djokovic picked up in the 77th minute of Botoșani against CFR Cluj on 19 December 2025, a match on which around €800,000 was reportedly staked on that specific booking.

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Neither case has produced a conviction. Both would, under the current statutes, have to be squeezed into fraud or corruption charges.

A European context Bucharest signed up to

Romania signed the Council of Europe’s Macolin Convention on 13 December 2024, the treaty that asks states to put match-fixing into their criminal law. Signing is not ratifying, and the Penal Code change has not followed.

Elsewhere, Italy’s 2006 Calciopoli case, which saw Juventus relegated to Serie B over a referee-influence scandal, is still the continent’s reference point for how far a fixing network can reach into a top league. More recently, Turkish prosecutors detained 32 people, including senior officials from several Süper Lig clubs, in a widening betting and match-fixing probe that opened in late 2025.

Cristian’s bill now goes to the Senate floor, with the Chamber of Deputies as the last stop.

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