by Declan Hill
David: Don’t worry! The Boss [Chieu] will help us out.
Chieu: Okay, easy to talk. I control your coach. I brought in your two foreigners. I paid the transfer fees for them, not the state FA.
Rahil: I will think it over fast.
Chieu: [Gives him an envelope full of cash] This is the FA Cup money.
David: Don’t worry. Chieu will help.
This excerpt shows the difference between Chieu and the far less subtle Kenan Erol. For a start, Chieu does not show up alone to the meeting. Rather, he uses a player to introduce him to other players. This action immediately helps to establish his credibility. David, a prominent player, twice vouches for Chieu’s trustworthiness.
He also shakes hands with the players. Chieu shows himself to be from a similar working-class background from the Malay vernacular he uses (this was stressed a number of times by the translator, although it is, obviously, not apparent in the English version) and is friendly and direct with the players. This is in contrast with the attitude of many club owners, who tended to patronize their players. Often players were expected to kiss the hands of the owners when they met them. Chieu, on the other hand, is courteous and, he claims, has the same owners on his payroll already. Even if this later claim turns out to be untrue, it still puts the idea in the players’ heads that it might not be, making them fearful of going to the management. Again, this is in direct comparison to Kenan Erol, who, when asked if he controlled the management, showed instantly that he was an outsider with little power. So in a few sentences, Chieu has managed to both be ingratiating and to isolate the players from their management.
David C. Whelan, a former New Jersey police officer turned criminal justice professor, wrote about organized crime’s involvement in point-shaving in college basketball. He claims that at the beginning of their relationship, “win bonuses” are paid by match-fixers to players to play as well as they can. Players regard the win bonuses as relatively benign: they will win and thereby keep the loyalty to their teams, but they still get the financial rewards of fixing matches. However, these payments were often what Whelan calls “gateway crimes,” which brought the players into the match-fixers’ net without them being aware of it.
Chieu uses Whelan’s “gateway crime” approach. He claims that if the players co-operate with him, they will not only get money for winning the next five games, but that he will also help them reach the final of the Malaysian Cup. Then he gives the players money for a game they had won several weeks ago. This is an important step. For as soon as the players accept the money, they have de facto accepted Chieu’s offer of a long-term relationship. The acceptance of the match-fixer’s money by the players, no matter what the motivation, signals the closing of the deal and the end of the possible innocence of the players. A Singaporean police officer supported this view in an interview: “But you know if they take the money once, it is over. They can never turn back because the gamblers will say, “If you don’t do it, we will let people know that you took the money.”
However, another match-fixer said, “As soon as [the players] take the money, they have to do what I say. I don’t do this thing where I show them the money and say, ‘This is yours if you do the match.’ No, I give them the money. I say, ‘This is coffee money. Take it. But don’t cross me. Or I will get you.’”
Now the fixer is not only showing the importance of player accepting the money, but he is also showing the change in attitude, from friendliness to menace (once the players have agreed to the corrupt deal) that drives the next stage of match-fixing.
CALLING THE FIX
From all the coverage around the 2007 Cricket World Cup and the purported mysterious death of coach Bob Woolmer, someone might think fixing is new to that game. However, match-fixing in cricket has a history that is at least two hundred years old. In 1806, English cricket was rife with match-fixing. There were criminal bookmakers who set up their shops underneath the stands at Lord’s cricket grounds, and like their Asian counterparts two centuries later, they were very trustworthy in paying their customers and extremely willing to fix games to cheat their rivals and their customers. William Beldham was a prominent cricketer who was approached by match-fixers to throw games. He claims that he refused, saying, “You never buy the same man but once … No, sir, a man was a slave when once he sold to these folk.” Beldham is describing the attitude change that affects the relationship between the players and the match-fixers once the players have taken their money. It is the same transformation that Michael Franzese spoke of when he told me: “You don’t treat the fixers as friends … you’re more friendly with the guys who don’t throw the games …”
Why would the dynamics of this relationship change so dramatically, particularly after the match-fixer has spent so much effort in getting access to the players and then setting up the fix? It is because at this stage, the match-fixer’s greatest chance of loss or profit can occur. Gambling match-fixing differs from internal fixes like the ones in the Russian league. In internal fixing, the ultimate goal is to fix the result of the game. The people who fix those games, really care which team wins the game. In gambling fixing, the fixers don’t care which team wins the game, but they do care about making as much money as possible.
There are actually two fixes going on: the fixing of the game and the fixing of the gambling market. To fix the market, the match-fixer has to look at the spread of the betting market, place the bet that will ensure the greatest profit, and then ensure that the players deliver that result. So the match-fixer has to make sure that the players will follow instructions to the absolute letter. Failure to do so ensures an enormous loss of money on the match-fixer’s part. The establishment of the phony relationship with the player is over; now it is all business.
In 1919, Jewish mobster Arnold Rothstein, working with the Chicago White Sox, fixed baseball’s most important competition, the World Series. The problems facing contemporary soccer match-fixers are almost identical to the ones faced by Rothstein. The chief problem is that they have to be able to get a sufficient quantity of money on to the market to make the fix worthwhile. However, if Rothstein, or any contemporary match-fixer, tried to place a heavy bet on one team, then the betting market will quickly become aware that there is something crooked going on. In general, betting companies know who the criminals are, but if Rothstein, or one of his known associates, had walked into an illegal betting shop and bet $10 on a game, no one would have noticed. If Rothstein or one of his associates had walked into an illegal betting shop and bet $60,000 on the game, then it would have been known throughout the market in hours. A fixer has to disguise the fact that he is placing the bets or his rivals will be aware of the fix. This is a problem shared by many successful gamblers who never even think of fixing a game. I spoke with a number of professional gamblers who were convinced that the bookmakers who were taking their bets were secretly stealing the bet, telling them it was not possible to get the money on and then betting themselves with other bookmakers. To overcome this problem, many successful gamblers and fixers hire their own agents to place their bets for them. These agents then hide the fact that they are placing a bet for the fixers.
A match-fixer will want the market to lean heavily against the fix – so the team he controls is expected to win. To encourage bettors to bet for the fixing team, he might spread a rumour that the other team has been weakened: an injury to a key player, dissension in the dressing room, or, ironically, that he has fixed the other team!
However, a match-fixer can also fix with the market to avoid detection, which means lower short-term profit but also less chance of detection. This is the real danger for European soccer leagues because this type of fixing can go on for years and no one suspects a thing. For example, a weak team is to play a strong team. The market expects the strong team to win. The match-fixers fix the weak team, pile on as much money as possible for the strong team and few people will suspect a fix as the result occurs as the market predicted. A Finnish fixing play
er testified in 2005 to this method:
I have taken money for a few games. This has been going on for years. The most recent case is from the last season. In this case, it was just a normal league game. We had gone to the game as the underdog, and so the loss did not surprise anybody.
Because much of sport betting is done in the two hours before the game begins, the later a match-fixer can place his bet, the easier it is to place bets on the market, and the more profit he can make. Say, for example, a match-fixer has established a link with players on Team A; he sees the betting market is betting heavily in favour of Team A winning the game. Ideally, the match-fixer would want to bet heavily at attractive odds (because if he comes into the market too early, it can cause the odds to change) and then signal to his team to “open up the game” – lose – in the minute before the game is to begin. This would ensure the match-fixer of the greatest profit. However, the match-fixer faces a problem: how can he signal to his players without attracting any attention and let them give him a signal that they have understood the signal in the final minutes before a big match when all the spectators, teammates, and officials are now watching them? One solution to this problem was described by an Indonesian match-fixer, who said:
What I do is have my runner stand beside the team box wearing a red singlet if the team is to lose. When they come out onto the pitch, they stand at the halfway line and salute the crowd. They see my runner wearing the red singlet and they know they must open up the game. If I wanted them to play hard, I would get my runner to wear a blue singlet. Now when the players see the runner, they must put their hands on their hearts, as if they are saluting the crowd. This is their signal to let us know they have seen and understood the signal. They cannot pretend later not to have seen the signal.
The match-fixer has now called the fix, ordering the players to rig the game in a certain way. Now it is up to the players to deliver the right result.
PAYMENT
The final stage of the fix comes after the game, when the fixer pays the player or referees. These pay ments have to be either hidden or deniable. The players are, for the most part, public figures. Their salaries are well known. Their lifestyles are closely examined. Their honest teammates work and play with them closely. How then can they enjoy the increased money without arousing suspicion?
Johnson Fernandez, one of the heroic Malaysian reporters, wrote in his exposé that the match-fixers were giving their players winning lottery tickets. The match-fixers would buy the tickets from the winners, and then give the tickets to the players who had fixed the matches so that they could claim that the money had been won legitimately. Some of the interview subjects claimed that another way was for the players to be given their own bets on the gambling market. This had a twofold advantage: it increased their payout and it guaranteed their co-operation with the fix. However, most payments to corrupt players in gambling fixes are still relatively unsophisticated cash payments.
Generally, the gambling match-fixers have two stages in making these payments to players. The first is an advance, or “coffee and shopping money” paid before the game. This payment really settles the deal and shows that the player will take part in fixing the match. However, the main payment is reserved for after the game, when the player has successfully performed the job. The place of payment is almost always a neutral location away from the soccer world – a disco or restaurant. Here is an example from one of the Malaysian players in his confession to the police:
A few weeks after that [the fixed match] Lee (*) phoned me. He made an appointment to see me at the Shell station in Ipoh. He wanted to pay me the money for the game against Singapore. I went straight there. I met Lee and his wife there. Lee told me to follow behind. We went to an industrial area. We spoke through the car windows. Lee gave me a restaurant menu, inside the menu was 15,000 Malaysian ringgit. Then I drove away. In the afternoon, I returned the menu, without the money in it.
There is another form of payment that successful, long-term match-fixers ensure is paid to the player – the psychological one. The match-fixers try to ensure a long-term relationship with corrupt players. It may no longer be friendly, but it does need to be maintained in good account. Often players do not feel particularly good about underperforming in matches. So match-fixers will provide them with “gifts” along with the payment. Frequently, these gifts are women. Rafiq Saad took part in a number of fixed matches for the match-fixer Chieu. One in particular was against the Singapore team in Singapore in front of 50,000 fans. Because of cultural rivalries, it is very difficult for a Malaysian player to lose to Singapore and to lose in front of 50,000 fans is very difficult. In Saad’s confession, he talks about the match-fixer providing the corrupt players with women:
On the XX in Singapore, we lost. I did not play all out. I went back to the hotel. The same night … Chieu had supplied four high-class prostitutes for four players …
This is not the last time we shall see that sex was used to pay people in the soccer world; here, it is the players who were “paid” with women. In the next chapter we shall see it is other people, the ones who were supposed to be the most honest and upright, who were regularly paid with women – the referees of some of the biggest soccer games in the world.
12
SEX AND THE MEN IN BLACK
Sex was used. Sometimes it would be the translator. She would come to the room and show that she was not opposed to being with the referee. Then the next morning they would come to him, the club officials, and say “If you are not sympathetic to our cause, we will let people know what you were doing last night.”
So far, I have written only about the players or team officials throwing games, but what about the referees? How do European club officials who want to fix a match, but who cannot make a deal with the other team, work? How do they corrupt referees?
To find the answers, I spoke to a man who was pre-eminent in the field of soccer match-fixing: a master of his craft, an expert in human nature, and someone with an extraordinary record of helping to bribe international soccer referees.
His name is Ljubomir Barin, a Croatian described as “the human screen,” “the black wallet,” and “the corruptor.” For years Barin helped manipulate European Cup matches for the French teams Bordeaux and Olympique de Marseille. In the 1980s and early 1990s, they were France’s top two soccer teams: winning, between them, twelve domestic trophies in ten years. Barin also worked as an agent for some of the top European clubs such as Standard Liège and Anderlecht of Belgium; Bayern Munich, the perennial German champions, and Red Star Belgrade, one of the top teams in the former Yugoslavia. He also worked with America’s former favourite team, the New York Cosmos.
Brian Glanville, the English author and soccer writer, headed up an investigation in the early 1970s for the Sunday Times newspaper. The investigation discovered that a Hungarian agent, Dezso Solti, was working to fix matches for the Italian team Juventus. Glanville and his colleagues revealed that Solti had invited a Portuguese referee to meet him in his hotel room before a European Cup semi-final. When the referee showed up, Solti had an attractive blonde woman on his arm and offered the referee a car if he helped Juventus into the final. Barin seems to be from the same man-of-the-world mould as Solti: a sophisticated, multilingual fixer from the former Soviet empire, Barin dresses immaculately in finely cut suits. You could imagine him showing up at a referee’s door with a blonde on one arm. The difference is that Barin would be providing the referee with the blonde.
For years, Barin provided referees and club owners with women, gifts, and bribes all in an attempt to help his French client clubs with European success. He established a financial network across two continents with bank payments to accounts in Zagreb, Switzerland, and Vienna. Barin knew how to fix games. He had style, a worldly knowledge, and ability to judge human nature. And on July 11, 1995, he gave the ultimate insider’s tutorial in match-fixing in an office room in a Marseilles courthouse to French magistrate Pierre Philipon.
Barin claims his match-fixing began in 1981 when Claude Bez, the president of Girondins de Bordeaux, watched his beloved soccer club lose yet another UEFA Cup game on a disputed penalty from an allegedly bought referee. After the game, Barin turned to a disappointed Bez and said, “If you want us to win, you’ve got to make a move and do what all the others do.” Bez said, “Okay.”
So Barin set out to change the “luck” of the club. He would say later about his work:
When a club asks me to look after the referees, it is not because I work as a translator. But, for sure, because I can influence the referees. It was important for me to organize a favourable atmosphere for the referees before a match. To accommodate them, to make sure they were well-received, give them gifts. You have to know which of the referees have children, so when they leave, they leave with well-packed suitcases.
In other words, Barin bribed referees. He gave them fur coats, Rolex watches, perfume, expensive clothes, and stylish pens. Barin also worked for Olympique de Marseille, owned by the charismatic businessman Bernard Tapie. Barin recounted that they often met the referees before the matches on Tapie’s yacht.
I remember one occasion when a referee was on the Phocéa, Bernard Tapie’s yacht, and he remarked that it was a nice watch on Tapie’s wrist. The next morning that referee got a gift of that type of watch … I believe that it was a British referee, but I don’t remember which match he acted in.