GENE­VA – The World Cup marks the cli­max of a sea­son in which match-fix­ing has spread more wide­ly through foot­ball than ever. Clubs and of­fi­cials in at least 12 Eu­ro­pean coun­tries – four of whose na­tion­al teams will line up in South Africa – are un­der scruti­ny in the con­ti­nent's biggest foot­ball cor­rup­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tion, be­ing led by po­lice in Ger­many.

Michel Pla­ti­ni, the pres­i­dent of UE­FA, even told law­mak­ers in Brus­sels last month that the sport is in "mor­tal dan­ger." In an un­ex­pect­ed and em­bar­rass­ing dis­trac­tion be­fore the June 11 kick­off, FI­FA is in­ves­ti­gat­ing ac­cu­sa­tions that dan­ger lies with­in the foot­ball fam­i­ly. Its ethics com­mit­tee is ex­am­in­ing claims by a se­nior Eng­lish of­fi­cial that Rus­sia, which did not qual­i­fy for the World Cup, could help heav­i­ly fa­vored Spain bribe World Cup ref­er­ees in ex­change for sup­port for its own bid to host the 2018 fi­nals.

The of­fi­cial, Eng­lish Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion chair­man David Tries­man, re­signed his post af­ter his pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion was re­vealed in a news­pa­per sting. FI­FA wants that probe com­plet­ed be­fore the first ball is kicked, so no taint of high-lev­el cor­rup­tion lingers on the sport's most-watched event.

To keep out­side crim­i­nal el­e­ments at bay, FI­FA has cre­at­ed a spin­off com­pa­ny called Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem aimed at mon­i­tor­ing wa­ger­ing on games. EWS was not in place for the 2006 tour­na­ment in Ger­many.

FI­FA al­so is set­ting up a hot line for play­ers and ref­er­ees to re­port sin­is­ter of­fers.

Yet un­der­ly­ing FI­FA's ap­proach is the rea­son­ing that match-fix­ing is most like­ly to hap­pen where play­ers and of­fi­cials are lit­tle scru­ti­nized and poor­ly paid – such as east­ern Eu­rope – and or­ga­nized crime has ac­cess to teams. The rea­son­ing: On­ly those with lit­tle to lose will risk be­ing ban­ished from the game for a pay­off that is typ­i­cal­ly just a few thou­sand dol­lars.

FI­FA pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter be­lieves the eco­nom­ics of the World Cup, a tour­na­ment which has prize mon­ey and at­ten­tion lav­ished on well-paid play­ers and of­fi­cials, is safe from the match-fix­ers.

Still, cor­rup­tion pre­vi­ous­ly has cast a shad­ow on foot­ball's show­case event, which will gen­er­ate around $3.4 bil­lion for FI­FA.

A match-fix­ing and bet­ting scan­dal in host Ger­many marred prepa­ra­tions for the 2006 World Cup. Ref­er­ee Robert Hoyz­er was jailed, and mem­bers of the Croa­t­ian crime syn­di­cate be­hind that scam have been ar­rest­ed in a cur­rent Ger­man probe. Italy won the World Cup four years ago just as a scan­dal was un­fold­ing at home that at­tract­ed world­wide scorn. Se­nior fed­er­a­tion and club of­fi­cials were banned from hold­ing of­fice af­ter it was re­vealed they arranged for ref­er­ees fa­vor­able to cer­tain teams to get key do­mes­tic match­es.

In the fall­out, ref­er­ee Mas­si­mo de San­tis was re­moved from World Cup du­ty weeks be­fore kick­off.

Blat­ter said then he feared ref­er­ees were a tempt­ing tar­get for fix­ers, and want­ed to raise their salaries and pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards. The 30 ref­er­ees and 60 as­sis­tants on World Cup du­ty will be close­ly guard­ed at their ho­tel near Pre­to­ria. The lat­est UE­FA probe has led to life­time bans for ref­er­ees from Bosnia and Ukraine for con­spir­ing with crim­i­nals to fix match­es in bet­ting scams. Both refs were rat­ed high­ly enough to take charge of World Cup qual­i­fiers.

Chi­na, mean­while, has re­vis­it­ed a bribery and match-fix­ing scan­dal that first plagued its na­tion­al league sev­er­al years ago.

A re­cent sweep of ar­rests caught fed­er­a­tion head Nan Yong and re­tired ref­er­ee Lu Jun, Chi­na's "gold­en whis­tle" who of­fi­ci­at­ed two match­es at the 2002 World Cup. Four years ago, Blat­ter was crit­i­cized for not ad­dress­ing po­ten­tial threats to FI­FA's flag­ship event, per­haps even dis­re­gard­ing the dan­ger so as not to at­tract un­wel­come at­ten­tion.

Last De­cem­ber, Blat­ter an­nounced in Cape Town two days be­fore the World Cup fi­nals draw that FI­FA had joined glob­al po­lice agency In­ter­pol to set up a task force to co­or­di­nate the fight against il­le­gal gam­bling in foot­ball. De­tails of the task force are still be­ing worked out. In Ghana, a pow­er­house in age-group foot­ball that has reached its sec­ond straight World Cup, of­fi­cials have seen the would-be fix­ers in ac­tion.

"Those peo­ple ex­ist any­where and that's why you have scan­dals all over," Ghana fed­er­a­tion spokesman Randy Abbey said.

Abbey in­ves­ti­gat­ed al­le­ga­tions in 2007 that a Ghana coach in­tro­duced na­tion­al un­der-23 teams play­ers to three fix­ers be­fore a match against Iran. Ghana lost 4-2, en­sur­ing the fix­ers won bets on a win­ning mar­gin of at least two goals.

What­ev­er steps or­ga­niz­ers take to stamp out cor­rup­tion, FI­FA and UE­FA can be sure match-fix­ers will play a cat-and-mouse game to try to stay a step ahead.