It didn’t add up for Mezeckis. He contacted FIFA. Chris Eaton alerted Sportradar. The Antalya matches went ahead as planned, one of the most egregious episodes of match-fixing ever conducted.
As game time approached on February 9, 2011, Janis asked Santia to confirm the identity of the match officials. Would they be from FIFA’s approved list? Santia had assured him that they would be, and that the officials would be Czech. One hour before kickoff, Santia informed Mezeckis that the refs were Hungarian. Mezeckis walked down to the referees’ dressing room in Antalya’s Mardan Stadium. There, the officials said that they were, in fact, Croatian. In actuality, they were Bosnian.
Darren Small, the chief operating officer of Sportradar, watched the betting for each game in Antalya behave identically. The pregame over-under was 2.5 goals, meaning that if you bet the over, and the two teams in a match combined to score three or more goals, you would win. This line generated massive betting on international bookmaker sites. Once the first goal of each game was scored, most bookmakers that Sportradar monitored pushed their over-under offer to 3.5, and the betting action subsided. With scoreless time passing in each game, the line dropped on most books, returning to 2.5. The betting action increased once more. “There was severe support for more than three goals in both games,” Small says. “The support in the marketplace for those games was nowhere near logical, with about five million euros bet per match on the over-under.”
But it wasn’t the betting movement that singled out these matches. It was how the results were achieved. There were at least three goals scored in aggregate in each game, as the betting patterns suggested there would be. Together, the games generated seven goals. This would be unremarkable but for the fact that all seven were scored from penalty kicks. In the case of one penalty kick, after the player missed, an assistant referee ordered that it be retaken.
Although Chris Eaton and his subordinates believed that Perumal was behind the Antalya matches, this was not the case. Perumal was watching from afar. When he learned about the way that the fix had transpired, he laughed. “How dumb can you be to play seven goals in a match?” he says. “You’re better off if you flash one red card to that team, and make sure the other wins by two–nil. So it doesn’t seem so awkward. And it’s not so obvious. Seven penalties. Same venue. Same day. Same company. Something is very wrong. Dan Tan destroyed a lot of things.”
Perumal believed, rightly so, that an obvious fix spoiled the business for everyone in it. He had been guilty of the trespass himself, with the fake Togo match. His resentment was focused on Dan Tan, who he believed was better in the background, rather than in operations. The two of them had arranged a December 2010 fix in Córdoba, Argentina, between the under-twenty national teams of Argentina and Bolivia. The plan was for Argentina to win in the last five minutes of the game. The referee disallowed a legitimate goal in the thirty-fifth minute. Regulation time expired with no further scoring. When the ref awarded Argentina with a penalty (successful) in the twelfth minute of injury time, it made a mockery of the game. Perumal claims that Dan Tan got greedy. “You have to be prepared to lose at some stage, and not win every fucking spin of the roulette,” he says. “You are fixing. One time it can fall on the wrong number. When they scored this twelfth-minute injury time penalty, the whole of South America came to know about match-fixing. Dan Tan completely destroyed our business in South America. He had this feeling he was bulletproof, that nobody is watching him, that nothing is going to happen, that you have license to do this.”
The obvious fraud in Antalya also insulted Chris Eaton’s sense of propriety. Further, he believed that he wasn’t dealing with sophisticated criminals, since Santia had done little to conceal the fix. Any child who had ever kicked around a ball in the backyard could tell that there was something wrong with these games. Yet Santia paid the refs. The players jogged off the field. And somewhere in the Far East, the syndicate was counting its money.
If a fix could be conducted so obviously and openly, Eaton realized, no amount of policing could defeat it. Or it would have already done so. A new approach was needed. Eaton began to think of fundamental reform, an institutional shift, a new set of regulations that would infiltrate the syndicate, protect players, and steadily dislodge the fixers from their entrenched position.
And Eaton thought of Perumal, and how Antalya had come and gone without him. “We thought we had Perumal there,” he says. The chase would continue, though Eaton feared that it might go on forever.
CHAPTER 20
Perumal was angry over the fact that Dan Tan had left him out in the cold, but he kept his sentiments to himself. He needed money to cover his mounting debts. In Finland, he negotiated on behalf of a Hungarian front group, agreeing on a $500,000 sale price with the Finnish owners of the club. When Perumal received this cash amount from syndicate runners, he gave the Finns only $200,000, retaining the balance for himself. The Finns phoned the Hungarians. The Hungarians called Singapore. When everyone gathered in an office in Rovaniemi, it was clear who had been the cause of the misunderstanding.
Perumal’s charm had begun to wear off in anger and irritability. By early 2011, relations between Perumal and his main corrupted player at RoPS, Christopher Musonda, were strained. On February 16, RoPS lost to the club Vaasan Palloseura by a score of 3–0, though Perumal had arranged with Musonda to lose 4–0. This enterprise was bleeding money. When Musonda returned to the locker room after the game, he received a text message from Perumal. “U guys are stupid,” it read. “Where is the one more goal. So close n still cant get the job done.”
It was a wonder why Perumal stuck with his Finnish club for so long. But by the end of February 2011, with the arctic winter having closed in, he had reached his limit. On February 23, RoPs drew a 1–1 tie against Tampere United, though Musonda and his teammates were supposed to have lost. Perumal met Musonda and two of his teammates at Fransmanni, a formal French restaurant near the stadium. Perumal scolded them. He was so consumed in the frustration that his business caused him that he failed to notice that he had been followed to Fransmanni. Perumal well understood that injuring the syndicate’s business carried a price. The Singapore syndicate had finally made its determination about Wilson Perumal. It wouldn’t be long before he knew what it was.
CHAPTER 21
The FIFA executive committee tabulated its results on December 2, 2010. When Sepp Blatter climbed the stage at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, he said simply: “We go to new lands.” FIFA awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia. The 2022 World Cup went to Qatar. Six months earlier, FIFA had staged its first African World Cup. After a stopover in Brazil in 2014, the fifth time that the tournament would be held in South America, FIFA would take the World Cup competition to Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the first time for both regions. This was a distinct acknowledgment of FIFA’s regard for emerging markets. Or was it? As soon as Blatter had made the announcement, charges of corruption and vote-rigging began to circulate. And no wonder. A month before the World Cup ballot, FIFA’s ethics committee had suspended two members of its executive committee—a Nigerian, Amos Adamu, and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti—suspected of attempting to sell their votes.
Qatar’s poor reputation meant that the preponderance of the accusations was directed at it, and not at Russia. FIFA’s own scouting report on Qatar’s viability as a World Cup host warned of the dangers of the high summer temperatures, which were a health risk to fans and players alike. Members of the U.S. contingent, which lost to Qatar in the final round, had difficulty understanding how the United States’ developed infrastructure, large population and fan base, and the marketing opportunities of its economy failed to attract enough votes. Those familiar with the history of FIFA’s internal politics recalled the organization’s contentious 1998 presidential election. At the time, there were whispers that the Qatari government had financed Blatter’s campaign, enabling him to defeat the reformer Lennart Johans
son, a Swede, who had once appeared to be the favorite. Insiders now alleged that Mohamed bin Hammam, the Qatari member of FIFA’s executive committee, had paid for votes. But was there any proof? The World Cup brings great financial benefit to the host economy and those closely tied to it. The losers in the World Cup selection process routinely cry foul. FIFA’s murky histories make it an easy target.
Only the rare FIFA vote—whether it was to determine a tournament host or who would be president of the organization—was devoid of suspicion. From João Havelange’s 1974 ouster of Stanley Rous as FIFA president, to the voluminous, opaque licensing and sponsorship deals that Blatter had engineered, it was often hard to tell how things transpired. FIFA didn’t benefit from the sorts of financial controls that usually guide large organizations. The photo of Blatter with the infamous Russian organized criminal leader Taiwanchik (who was charged with fixing the figure-skating competition during the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City) may have been an unfortunate coincidence for the FIFA president. But it served to confirm ever-growing public sentiment that Blatter and FIFA were unscrupulous. It felt as though there was always another FIFA scandal waiting to happen.
That’s the one benefit often overlooked in a state of continuous scandal: a new disgrace obscures the one previous to it. No sooner was the World Cup announcement completed than another FIFA election materialized in the near distance, to be held on June 1, 2011. Blatter’s four-year term was about to expire. Surprisingly, in the upcoming election that would determine if he would stay or go, Blatter was facing a serious challenger. The identity of this candidate came as a shock. Mohamed bin Hammam had always been a close ally.
A longtime member of FIFA’s executive committee, bin Hammam also sat on Qatar’s Advisory Council, a select group that counseled Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, then the country’s emir. Bin Hammam was close to power, and he wanted some of his own. On March 18, 2011, he announced his candidacy in the upcoming election. In the wake of the World Cup announcement, Qatar was gaining momentum.
CHAPTER 22
FIFA HEADQUARTERS, ZURICH, MARCH 2011
Eaton dispatched an alert to various national soccer federations, advising them to be aware of bogus front companies, of Tamils from Singapore, of a man who called himself Raj. While concerned about the vulnerability of these organizations, Eaton privately hoped that Perumal would attempt to compromise one of them, thereby revealing himself and his location. Eaton continued to compile evidence from the many global sources he had accumulated during his Interpol days. To him, these pieces composed a conspiracy, with Wilson Perumal at its center. But Perumal was the one piece that was missing.
Eaton felt like he was the only one in Zurich who understood the importance of finding Perumal. This was another sign of Eaton’s incompatibility with his colleagues. He took no part in the “team-building” activities outside the office. He knew that he would never fit in with the reserved, Swiss way of doing things. When he did make jokes with people around the office, as was his way, they often took him at his word. Eaton concentrated on his operational task, rather than on internal politics. Invariably, he took his lunches alone. On March 1, 2011, having recently returned from San Salvador, he returned to his drab basement office after another solitary lunch. His phone rang.
On the line was Graham Peaker, intelligence coordinator at UEFA. He and Eaton had cooperated on previous match-fixing-related inquiries, sharing information and expertise. Peaker specialized in IT. He wasn’t an investigator. But he knew that Eaton was. He was calling now because the phone request he had just received required Eaton’s experienced hand. Peaker said that he had information about a crime that had been committed in Finland.
Eaton was interested. He listened intently to Peaker. “Police in Finland have arrested someone,” Peaker told him. “We don’t know who he is. But he has been fixing matches up there.”
Eaton asked Peaker for details. Until now, Eaton had been dealing only with compromised players and soccer officials. The fixers themselves were phantoms, aliases signed at the bottom of an email, blurred images on stadium security videos, the binary code of mounting data. Peaker said that he would supply more information in an email. But Eaton persisted. He had a feeling about this one, and he wanted to confirm it right away.
“Okay,” said Peaker. “The police said that they observed this guy yelling at the players and threatening them.” Eaton sat up in his chair, excited. Could this have just fallen into his lap?
Peaker said: “The players call him Raj.”
Eaton knew that millions of Indians went by the name of Raj. But there could be no mistake. This Raj had to be the one he was looking for. Eaton told Peaker: “I’m going to Finland.”
CHAPTER 23
Nine days earlier, on February 20, 2011, a man named Joseph Tan Xin walked into the central police station of Rovaniemi, Finland. Tan Xin, a Singaporean national of Chinese descent, informed the duty officers that another Singaporean man, of Indian background, was currently in town traveling on a false passport. Tan Xin identified the man as Wilson Perumal. When the officers asked Tan Xin why he had supplied them with this information, he reacted defensively, saying that he would leave the station if they treated him as a criminal.
Jukka Lakkala, an inspector with the Rovaniemi police, walked over to the Scandic Hotel, where Perumal was lodging. There Lakkala and a colleague took Perumal into custody. When they returned to the station, the officers realized that they had detained the wrong suspect, another Indian man who had been staying in a different room in the same hotel. Careful not to make the same mistake twice, Lakkala placed the hotel under surveillance. When Perumal appeared, police followed him.
On February 23, they watched Perumal join three other men, European in appearance. The group headed to the Keskuskenttä stadium, where RoPS was about to play Tampere United. In the stands, Perumal held his phone to his ear throughout almost the entire match, talking only occasionally. Lakkala and his colleagues couldn’t figure out what might cause him to behave this way. They were intrigued. They didn’t know that Perumal had paid Musonda €80,000, 10,000 per participating player, for RoPS to lose by a score of 3–0. On the phone, Perumal was directing his betting.
A bookie in Macau had been hounding Perumal over a $200,000 debt. Via email, the bookie wrote that he knew Perumal was traveling on a false passport, that it would be easy to alert the police. Perumal was offended. That was against the criminal code. You never went to the police. And he was anxious. Any contact with the police in Finland could lead him to a prison cell in Singapore, where his five-year sentence awaited. But if Musonda and his RoPS teammates could affect the fix, Perumal would go a long way to solving his financial difficulties. In this small stadium, in this forgotten league, how hard could it be to influence the game’s outcome? No one was watching. He had most of the players in his pocket. But of the seven matches that Perumal had attempted to fix with RoPS that season, only one had come through. Instead of stockpiling the money he needed to settle his debts, he was losing. This was the final match of the RoPS season, Perumal’s last chance. On his phone during the match, he stood to win $1 million, but RoPS had to lose. When the game ended, Perumal couldn’t believe it. RoPS had tied, 1–1.
Police were watching. They followed Perumal and one of his associates to Fransmanni, the French restaurant near the soccer stadium. Officers watched the restaurant as Musonda and two other players joined Perumal. It was a contentious meeting. The players cowered as Perumal and his associate appeared to threaten them. To Lakkala, this all looked more interesting than a simple case of a fraudulent passport. But he wasn’t sure what he was watching. Although various fixers had been manipulating RoPS matches for at least the past three seasons, doing so through the club’s most popular player, who had then become its coach, the local police professed to have no idea of such activity.
Two days later, at 6 A.M., Lakkala watched Perumal
board a flight from Rovaniemi to Helsinki. Lakkala phoned ahead to his colleagues in the capital. When Perumal arrived at Helsinki’s Vantaa airport, customs officers took him aside. They scrutinized his passport. Chelliah Raja Morgan was the name on the document. The date of birth was listed as October 7, 1987. Perumal may have been a youthful forty-five years old, but he could hardly pass for twenty-three. On February 24, 2011, at 8:50 A.M., police took him into custody. But they didn’t know who he was.
Perumal was desperate to keep it that way. However, the trail of evidence he had left behind threatened to undo him. Once police transported him back to Rovaniemi, Lakkala and his colleagues began going through Perumal’s belongings. They recovered files from his laptop. They read his emails and text messages. They looked through the numbers in his phone. His phone book included a Cyprus number for “Dan.” Two of Ibrahim Chaibou’s numbers were there also. There was a listing for “Dead Ball Specialist,” as well as numbers for Christopher Musonda, Togo soccer officials, bookies, and criminal figures and financiers. In all, he had contacts from thirty-four different countries, from Venezuela to Slovakia to Qatar to Zambia. From Perumal’s Rovaniemi hotel room, police recovered the scratch-pad math of his fixes, what he paid players, the amounts he expected to make on the betting market. The notes referred to a series of under-twenty-three friendlies that he was arranging in Kuwait, between the Kuwaiti national team and Syria, Palestine, and even Switzerland, Singapore’s European equivalent. All told, the evidence constituted the most complete record of the Singapore syndicate that authorities had ever seized. But to the Finns, it was a thousand scattered puzzle pieces. They couldn’t see the image they were looking at.
The Big Fix Page 12