Dexerto’s Editor-at-Large Richard Lewis begins to untangle the web of claims made by Aleksey ‘Yarabeu’ Kurlov, the disgruntled former ESIC employee who claimed he wanted to expose that esports is rife with match-fixing.
You can read Part 1 of this article series, “Scrutinizing the ESIC “whistleblower”: The first contact”, here.
While it was clear that Yarabeu had a burning desire to talk to people about his experiences, I had assumed there would be at least some kind of restraint on how many people he spoke to and the nature of the allegations he made. As it turned out, he was talking to almost any outlet that would spare him the time, and his allegations grew increasingly specific, despite the fact that they seemingly couldn’t be substantiated.
Once they had verified the emails, Cybersport.ru republished the blog in its entirety. The general reaction from the users of that site was muted, with most seemingly concluding that the blog was light on details for its length and that there was mostly little new information in it. Yet the three months Yarabeu had worked at ESIC had lent him a kind of credibility, so the assumption was that he would have had access to lots of information the rest of us wouldn’t. I knew of a number of journalists that entered into conversation with him but weren’t exactly champing at the bit to publish what those conversations had entailed.
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