The National Congress of Peru has taken the “decisive step” to determine match-fixing as a crime under the Penal Code. 

Congress has authorised new articles prepared by the Justice Commission to help national authorities and the Judiciary fight against sports corruption, fraud, and the manipulation of sports events. 

Peru’s Penal Code will now feature a new segment, Article 197-A, carrying specific criminal provisions on match-fixing.

Under the new law, any individual who directly or indirectly participates in influencing the course or outcome of a sporting competition or event can face between three and six years in prison. The article also states that if manipulation is directly connected with a sports betting licence or associated brands, the judiciary can impose prison terms of between four and eight years.

To ensure integrity, all licensed bookmakers are required to sign an official charter of rules against match-fixing, with the commitment formally endorsed by senior executives of the licence. 

The legislative framework applies to a wider circle of actors within sport, including athletes, referees, coaches, administrative or support staff, medical personnel, agents, and directors of clubs, leagues, or federations, as well as any other person with direct or indirect influence over a sporting competition.

By codifying match-fixing as a criminal offence and reinforcing compliance obligations for betting operators, the Peruvian authorities aim to confront a growing integrity threat fuelled by the rapid expansion of sports betting across the country. Professional sport in Peru is known to be highly exposed to the risk of manipulation, with national governing bodies under increasing pressure to adopt modern integrity frameworks to monitor and report suspicious activity.

Monitoring by Sportradar on “Corruption in Betting and Match-Fixing in 2023” placed Peru in eighth position worldwide for suspected manipulation, a dramatic rise from 28th place in 2022. This surge represents one of the steepest increases globally and highlights the vulnerability of Peruvian competitions. 

According to Sportradar, football dominates the country’s suspicious cases with 880 matches flagged for possible manipulation, while basketball accounted for 205 alerts and table tennis for 70 alerts. The findings underline how far Peru lags behind other South American nations in building coordinated safeguards against corruption in sport.

The reform of the Penal Code comes exactly one year after Peru launched its regulated online gambling market, overseen by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism (MINCETUR). The market was designed to bring foreign operators out of the grey sector and into a fully licensed framework, with all operators subject to a 12% tax on net income from gambling transactions.

The launch of Peru’s market was widely praised as a forward-thinking initiative, positioning the country alongside neighbouring jurisdictions such as Brazil and Colombia, both of which have recently modernised their gambling regimes to attract international investment while maintaining tighter control over betting activity. Policymakers framed the regulation as a means not only to generate fiscal revenues but also to strengthen consumer protections and safeguard the integrity of sport.

Yet by March, an intervention by President Dina Boluarte brought chaos to Peru’s fledgling gambling regime. On her orders, the national tax agency SUNAT imposed a one per cent Selective Consumption Tax (ISC) on wagers from licensed operators, effective from 1 September. 

The measure was rolled out without clear technical guidance on how turnover should be calculated or whether bonuses and incentives should be exempt, sparking immediate backlash.

Industry voices warn the structure could be “catastrophic” for the licensed market, while an alliance of local sportsbooks has already launched a legal challenge, appealing to Congress for a formal revision. Their central grievance is that foreign operators can simply pass the ISC burden onto players, whereas domestic licensees are forced to absorb the cost. Critics argue this creates a regulatory imbalance, skewing competition and weakening SUNAT’s enforcement powers against offshore firms.

The dispute underscores a sharp stand-off in the first year of Peru’s new gambling regime: significant progress on regulation and integrity reforms set against the headwinds of political intervention, unresolved tax policy, and a deeply divided industry.

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