The Esports Integrity Commission, also known as ESIC, was passed evidence that Project X's CEO, Oleksandr Shyshko had previously placed many bets on highly suspicious Project X matches. It also appears he bet on a CIS RMR game that featured the same cour players, now playing under the Akuma tag, which have recently found themselves in some hot water at the recent EPIC League tournament.

ESIC added that Shyshko placed a bet, and an accurate one at that, on the outcome of Virtus.pro vs Akuma, which is a game that would go on to feature heavily in cheating allegations aimed at Akuma. ESIC forwarded the evidence to Valve, and has made an official recommendation that ESIC aligned tournament organizers do not include Akuma, nor a team made up of more than three current Akuma members, and also refuse to allow any other team associated with Oleksandr Shyshko to take part until the investigations are finished.

The evidence appears to have been acquired from the Suspicious Betting Alert Network, which is also known as SBAN. ESIC took the evidence and accepted it as a reasonable basis to believe there may have been match-fixing or betting fraud may have occurred, and determined it as a matter worth further investigation. ESIC commissioner Ian Smith noted that 'if ESIC did have jurisdiction, we would have opened a full investigation based on what we already know", stating that because of this the evidence was passed to Valve for further consideration. In the same announcement, ESIC clarified that it so far has not sanctioned, nor does it plan to sanction any individual associated with the evidence so far, unless Valve instructs them to do so. 

It is important to note that so far ESIC, nor Valve, have been able to verify whether the suspicions of by many players and teams of EPIC League that Akuma's players were receiving live or near-live data on external devices during the match are accurate or not.

As always, we here at GamerGalaxy will do what we can to update our readers as the investigation continues, you can read our previous article on early suspicions on Akuma here. You can also read the ESIC statement here.