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Sport Nation
Former umpire considering legal action following arrest in 2022
Sam Edmund • May 5th, 2025 8:29 pm
Former AFL field umpire Michael Pell is strongly considering legal action against the league, two-and-a-half years after being arrested for suspicious Brownlow betting activity.
Pell was arrested in November 2022 by detectives from the Victoria Police Sporting Integrity Intelligence Unit for allegedly sharing information on which players would receive votes in specific matches last year, including matches he was involved in.
Yet despite seeing his blossoming umpiring career disintegrate, stints in hospital dealing with mental health concerns and struggling to hold down jobs, police have not charged him in the 30 months since.
Sources said Pell, who has always protested his innocence, was this week meeting with lawyers to discuss suing the AFL for what his camp argue was a forced resignation in the wake of the scandal.
Pell did not return calls today.
He was arrested on November 14, 2022 and taken in for half a day of questioning in relation to allegations he had engaged in conduct that corrupts or would corrupt a betting outcome.
The accusation has not been that Pell influenced the outcome of a sporting event like the Brownlow, but that he had passed on information that he had inside knowledge of.
But the sharing of inside information, while a criminal act in NSW, is not in Victoria unless it is proven to have resulted in the corruption of a sporting event.
Victoria’s Corrupt Conduct Laws state police must prove the sharing of insider information resulted in the corruption of the outcome of a sporting event.
AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon said the outcome of the 2022 Brownlow had not been impacted by the allegations made against Pell.
