The Esports Integrity Commission has said it has found evidence of suspicious betting from Oleksandr Shyshko, the former CEO of Project X. Project X are the team which the Akuma roster played under, it was revealed today in the ESIC betting report.
The Commission found that Shyshko has an active CS:GO betting account which placed numerous suspicious bets on Project X matches. The organization disbanded in March. He also made accurate pre-match bets on the result of the Akuma vs. Virtus. Pro match, which took place during the CIS Regional Major Ranking event in May.
“In assessing the evidence, ESIC determined that there was a reasonable basis to believe that potential match-fixing and/or betting fraud behaviour was perpetrated,” the esports watchdog said in a statement.
The ESIC has forwarded the evidence discovered to Valve, the developer of CS:GO, to potentially investigate Akuma and Shyshko regarding possible betting fraud. If found guilty, this would likely lead to a suspension of Akuma’s future participation in Valve-sanctioned events.
More Controversy
Akuma was recently shrouded in controversy following several cheating accusations by professional players and teams. During the CIS RMR event, the relatively unknown side took down both Natus Vincere and Virtus. Pro, respectively. Akuma finished third in the event following a defeat to Gambit and VP.
Following the conclusion of the event, several CIS teams called for Valve to take action against the side. In an open letter to Valve, 14 teams, most of which took part in the CIS RMR hosted by EPIC League, asked Valve to launch a full investigation into the cheating allegations against Akuma on June 3, HLTV.org reported.
“Based on the information we have, we suspect that the AKUMA team/players received live data from third parties on external devices in order to gain the unfair advantage of seeing opponents’ positions on the map at all times,” the letter read.
As of the time of publication, Valve is yet to comment on the Akuma betting report by the ESIC.
