The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime

by Declan Hill

  Then Chin and I spoke on the phone. He invited me to meet him. So I dropped everything and flew out. Then followed ten days of cancelled meetings and unreturned phone calls. Finally, we had agreed to meet on Saturday afternoon. It had been confirmed, but at 6:37 p.m., one of his assistants had abruptly cancelled the meeting: “Mr. Chin is very busy. You must understand that. If you state the nature of your business he might be able to see you in the next few weeks.” The thought of having flown all the way out to Asia to cancel yet again, made me furious. But I kept my temper as best I could and pleaded that we already had made plans for an interview. I had already made it clear what the interview was to be about. The assistant hung up, and I did not rate my chances too highly of getting the interview, at least not for that day. Then at 8:07 p.m. I received another call.

  “Hello, is that you?” a voice said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Is that Mr. Chin?”

  “Yes. Where are you?”

  “I’m downtown near the central shopping centre.”

  “You know the – Country Club?” He named an expensive golf club on the outskirts of the city.

  “I can find it.”

  “Good. Take a taxi. I’ll see you there in one hour. Very sorry to have been late. My room is at 1104 on the ground floor, just come straight there.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you.”

  Actually, I was not completely looking forward to seeing him. I was very nervous. However, I was not too surprised. It is almost standard operating procedure when meeting criminals that the location changes at the last minute. I once met a couple of enforcers for the Hells Angels, in Barrie, Ontario. The Hells Angels biker gang at that time were in the midst of a bloody war with another biker outfit called the Rock Machine. We were supposed to meet at a local restaurant; I sat there for half an hour until one of their former girlfriends arrived. She apologized and told me that I was to go with her, and she would take me to meet them at an undisclosed location. We ended up at a half-empty suburban shopping mall where the enforcers were waiting. That time had been nerve-racking. As I had got into her car, I had wondered about whether I would ever come back. The Hells Angels were expanding into the English-speaking part of Canada and they did not have a reputation for gentleness. However, I was a representative of a national television network, and a colleague was sitting in another car nearby. We were in mobile phone contact. If I did disappear, it would not be long before someone came to inquire about me.

  Having gone through that experience did not make me feel any better going to meet Mr. Chin. Courage is like a bucket filled with a mysterious liquid. You use up your supply of the liquid in the bucket and there is none left. This time I was alone. Through my own life choices, I had ceased to be a representative of a powerful media organization and was now a relatively poor graduate student. The Thai police are not really into rescuing impoverished people from the clutches of millionaires at their country clubs. A friend had promised to call me at midnight, and we had worked out an elaborate code for him to ask me if I was all right. But really what could they do if I did not answer or said the code word for “I’m in trouble”? I remembered the British graduate student who was murdered while researching drug gangs in Bristol in 1970s. I thought of Jim Thompson, the art collector, silk merchant, and sometime CIA operative who had disappeared in Malaysia in the 1960s. His body still has not been found.

  As instructed, I got in a taxi. Time speeded up and I viewed everything as if in a dream. The very oxygen I breathed seem valuable. The taxi driver chatted amiably and I tried to do my best to make sure he remembered me and where he had dropped me off, in case someone had to follow my last known movements. We drove up to the club. Beside the driveway executives practised their golf drives by floodlight. Then the taxi pulled up and I got out.

  It was 9:55 p.m. and the restaurant and lobby were empty. It was an old, classic building surrounded by a long veranda that looked out over grass lawns. It was like a set for a 1930s film noir. And, like a cliché from every movie about the tropics, I could hear crickets sounding loudly in the darkness. I went over to the staff behind the front desk and made sure that I questioned them enough that they, too, would remember me, if asked. I couldn’t hear the sounds of any other guests. Apart from the people in the lobby, the place seemed deserted.

  I walked quickly down the empty corridor toward room 1104. I didn’t want to slow down. I didn’t want to give myself time to think or consider. I had now been conducting my research in Asia for months, asking embarrassing questions, probing where local journalists had long since given up. Was this entire meeting Chin’s way of luring me to his territory and then beating the crap out of me or worse?

  I stood in front of the door.

  I had stood, in fear, in front of other doors, not knowing what lay behind them, one part of me not wanting to know, another part not wanting to turn back. There was the time with the Central American crime lord, who had taken me and an entire television crew on a tour of his house. We had gone through his recreation room, complete with a bar, full-sized polar bear skin rug and medieval sex sculptures. Then he stood us in front of a door. He smiled and said, “I bet you won’t guess what is in here. It’s my favourite.” Then he pushed open the swing doors. Inside, and this was right beside the love-pad bar, was a fully functional, state-of-the-art, scrubbed-down gynecological operating room, with a full set of extra-large forceps, drills, and a saddle-shaped table. I still have nightmares about what takes place in that room.

  But what was behind this particular door at night in a Bangkok golf club? Would it be as surreally sick as the gynecology lab? Would there be an explosion of violence? A smashing of field hockey sticks, like Wilson Raj’s attack on the Croatian player? If an attack was to come on me, I hoped it would be with a field hockey stick. I was vaguely comforted by the thought, somehow it seemed less frightening than a baseball bat. A baseball bat was what Al Capone had used. A field hockey stick was what upper-class girls at Cheltenham Ladies’ College used: if the mobsters hit me with a field hockey stick it would be bad, but I would be alive. With those irrelevant and probably erroneous thoughts running through my head, I knocked on the door.

  There was a voice behind the door. I stood away from it so if the attack came, I would have a few feet of room. My hand was in my pocket, holding a small can of pepper spray. But I tried to make my face look as reassuring as possible. The door opened. An Asian man opened it; he did not look particularly threatening, and he asked me to come in.

  I walked in the room. The door closed behind me.

  There were three people: two men, Chin and one of his assistants; on the bed, a beautiful woman watched a movie. The curtains were open and I could see around the room. There was no one on the balcony. As I had walked past the bathroom, I pretended to be a little lost and pushed the door; there was no one there.

  I was not attacked. I was not threatened or menaced in anyway. There were no scenes of torture or brutality featuring gynecological forceps, field hockey sticks, or any other kind of weapon. What followed for the next two hours and fifteen minutes was one of the most bizarre conversations I have ever had.

  To this day, I am still not entirely sure how much was bullshit and how much was the truth. In some ways that is irrelevant in journalism: there is bullshit, facts, and legally provable facts. I have omitted the specific names of many of the players and coaches that Chin named. I include some of the games that he alleged were fixed because it is in the public interest to know that a major Asian fixer claimed that those particular games were fixed. But I do not make any claims to knowing whether the games were actually fixed or who were the specific individuals who might have been fixing those games.

  Here then are the major points.

  Stephen Fleming, the great New Zealand cricket captain, claims he was approached by a gambler in 1999 who had told him that there was a syndicate of Asian bookies arranging top international games of cricket and soccer. �
�Look, these things are not coincidences,” the gambler was alleged to have said about a recent soccer match. “If you want to know where the real money is, it’s in the syndicate that’s going on around the world right now, speculating on the likelihood of certain results or occurrences.” The gambler, according to Fleming, said prominent sportsmen were involved, including some in English soccer and tennis.

  In essence, this is what Chin told me. The only difference was that he claimed to be one of the men at the centre of a network. He claimed to have sixteen runners around the world working exclusively for him.

  There were two phones on the table. One rang almost as soon as I sat down. Chin answered and started talking in what I think was Bahasa Indonesian mixed with English. He talked amiably, saying a few players’ and coaches’ names that I recognized, then he put down the phone. He turned to me.

  “You see, Mr. Hill, I am getting call. It is from the Philippines. You know the SEA Games that are going on now. I am arranging all the matches. Laos only lost 1-0 to Singapore. Everyone thought that Singapore would win 3-or 4-0. I control the Laos team I told them to go all out. I knew they could keep the score level.”

  The SEA Games are the Southeast Asian Games, equivalent to the Pan-American games or the All-Africa Games: a continent-specific version of the Olympics with athletics, soccer, and other events such as sailing. They had started a few days before in the Philippines. It was not a complete surprise that a fixer would be alleging that the games were fixed. A top Asian sporting official, the same one that had the fixer’s number in his speed-dial, had told me that the events were plagued with “caring and sharing” or “through every pipe a little water must flow.” In other words, the various sports officials divided up the games to make sure that each nation would get at least some medals to make sure their home governments were not bothered by any lack of sporting success. If it were just him, I would not bother to mention it, but a few days after my meeting with Chin, I had read that the weary Thai prime minister repeated the same allegation, saying very publicly that many of the competitions in the SEA games were fixed; the chef de mission of the Vietnamese delegation had even given a press conference at which he announced how many medals would be won by each country before the SEA Games had begun. That Chin would tell me that the games were fixed was no surprise, but he went on to tell me that he and his associates travelled the world fixing international soccer matches.

  I asked him what the biggest event he ever fixed was.

  Chin shrugged. “The Olympics? The World Cup? I don’t know. Which is bigger?”

  This seemed absolutely bizarre.

  “I went to the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996,” Chin said. “I fixed a game in the 1996 Olympics: Tunisia versus Portugal. I bribed some of the Tunisian guys to lose outside of the spread. They did it.”

  We spoke about the fix. He claimed that it was one of the rare ones where the players he approached would not even consider doing it for money: they were too religious.

  “Finally I get this beautiful Mexican girl. I paid her $50,000 for the whole tournament. That is a lot of money for them. She would hang out in the lobby … met him [one of the players from Tunisia], they went up to his room, did it, and then she proposed to him. Then I went in … ‘Will you do the game for me?’ He said ‘Yes, opening game.’ They lost to Portugal 2-0 … I make a lot of money and everyone was happy.”

  One of his phones rang at 10:27 p.m. There was a conversation that lasted two minutes in a language that I could not understand. Like many Asians, Chin speaks at least four languages. I could not follow what was being said. He put the phone down.

  “You see this I just got a call. Hannover is going to win by at least two goal. It is arranged. I have only put $20,000 down. Not much.”

  “Not much! Maybe to you,” I said, “but $20,000 is a lot of money to me.”

  The woman on the bed laughed. It was the first and last time in the whole conversation that she showed even the slightest interest in what was said. I turned to look at her. She shrugged and flicked the converter of the television and continued to watch the movie.

  “The game starts right now. Hannover will win the game by at least two goals. You watch.”

  A translation might be in order. The top German league is known as the Bundesliga, literally “best division.” On November 26, 2005, Hannover was a middle-ranking team; they were playing another Bundesliga team, Kaiserslautern, in Germany. Chin was claiming just before the match began that Hannover would win by a score line of at least a two-goal difference. He did not say or reveal in any way how this result might be achieved whether it was a network of players or referees. He did say, in the course of the conversation, “Some German referees are bad … I have referees that work for me in many places, U.S., Greece. Many places.”

  I in no way want to imply that those specific referees were on the take to throw the Hannover versus Kaiserslautern match. That was never stated directly at any point in the discussion. However, it was by this time well known that Robert Hoyzer had taken money to throw games in the lower German leagues. So possibly Chin was simply repeating that fact. But what I can say is that throughout the next two hours, the phone rang five or six times, and I presumed one of his colleagues would tell him if a goal had been scored in the Hannover match.

  I told Chin that I did not believe his claims about fixing top leagues. The games were worth too much. The players are paid too much money.

  He smiled.

  That is a common mistake. People see the amount of money that is paid in transfer fees but that does not go to the players. You approach their agents; that is the way to get to the players. Say they get £50,000 a week. Then we offer them £150,000 for an hour and half’s work. Think they will turn that down? Very easy to get them to say yes. But all the leagues in the world, EPL, Champions League, World Cup, they can be fixed. I had players on Crystal Palace, Wimbledon, and Liverpool. You say these are great teams? They are bullshit. We can bribe them. You think because the clubs make big money in the transfer, that it means that the players won’t take a bribe. That is not true. They will take the money.

  It was my time to smile. I expressed disbelief. He shrugged again and told me some years ago one of his associates told him of a business opportunity.

  I remember one of my runners told me, “You can be a director of X [names a relatively prominent team in the U.K.]. You just have to pay £20,000 to £50,000.” I said, “Forget it. Let’s just make money.”

  We spoke about the network of Asian fixers. I said it was too difficult for Asians to get access to European players. He nodded:

  Yes, I have heard that the English gangs are now trying to fix EPL games. In the last four to five years, the Englishman comes to Asia … The Asians taught them how to fix games. One time they wanted to meet me but I refused. They are doing the same thing in boxing and rugby.

  When I had asked Pal whether he had sometimes used prostitutes to pay or to encourage corrupt players and officials, he was amazed that anyone would ask such a simple question. When I asked Chin whether he had links with top Asian team officials to fix matches, he too looked amazed that I would even have to ask.

  Last year for X [names a top Asian team] … the head of the team, phoned me. He paid me $300,000 so they could win a tournament … I fixed it so they would win.

  At this point, you might be wondering, as I was, why Chin would want to talk to me. Unlike Pal, who had been convicted and served jail time for all his fixes, Chin was claiming to tell me about current fixes and situations that were not public knowledge, let alone ones that had been prosecuted. As we talked, it became clear that he was interested in the possibility of my writing a book on him. I mention this because it gives Chin an important motivation to embellish or even fabricate entire incidents. He undoubtedly had fixed matches, even international tournaments before. He was rumoured, by English law enforcement sources, to have been approaching Premier League players. But how many of his stories were true at tha
t point, I could not say.

  At quarter after midnight, I left the room. Unhurt. But my mind was stirred to the core. Chin and I shook hands. I left. For the record, a few minutes before I departed another call came through from his correspondent: Hannover had beaten Kaiserslautern five goals to one. It fitted Chin’s prediction – a victory by more than two goals.

  A few days later, I sat on the beach of Sentosa Island, Singapore. I had flown in, played my last game of soccer, and now I sat in the fashion parade beside the beach bar having a drink. Normally, Sentosa Beach is a “place to be,” full of gorgeous bikini-clad beauties and muscular men. Music plays and it seems a little like an Asian version of a California beach movie, minus the surf boards, circa 1962. But today, I missed all of that. My head was in a whirl. I was trying to figure out the answer to questions that ran through my mind.

  Was there, as Lee Chin claimed, really a network of international gamblers fixing matches? Or was it all nonsense designed to get a book deal for him? Even if Chin wanted a book deal, if he were making such large amounts of money, it would not be worth it. Nor would it do him any good. Maybe it was all a question of personality. I knew he had a long track record of fixing games, but maybe he was the Baron Münchhausen of match-fixers? Maybe he was a fantasist that spouted off great-sounding stories to fool impressionable researchers? On the other hand, he had never granted an interview before, so why start now with a line of nonsense?