Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer

by Wilson Raj Perumal

  "There is the Agribank Cup in Vietnam in November", I informed her. "But first I need to get your team invited by the Vietnamese FA. We don't know if there will be any betting on these games at this point in time; we just have to wait and see. If there is betting, then business is on".

  "OK", said Rosemary.

  I called my contact in the Malaysia FA and he provided me with the e-mail address of a friend of his in the Vietnam FA. We started corresponding.

  "Zimbabwe would like to participate in your tournament", I wrote. "We'll pay for the airfare".

  Then I called Thana and told him to ask his boss for 11 thousand dollars to buy Zimbabwe's airline tickets to Vietnam, but Thana declined.

  "The boss doesn't want to pay for the airfare", he said.

  Fuck. Where was I going to find the money to bring Zimbabwe to Vietnam? I called the Vietnamese FA and came up with an excuse.

  "Unfortunately FIFA has given Zimbabwe specific instructions not to accept any favors or tickets from a third party", I explained. "Money can only move from one Football Association to the other. Zimbabwe will not come unless you pay for their airfare".

  Now the organizers of the event were faced with their own dilemma: they had already received funding from the Agribank Cup sponsors and had to come up with enough teams to play in the tournament. In the end, they gave up and decided to pay for the airfare themselves.

  On November 1st, 2007, before departing for Vietnam, I happened to walk near the Jalan Besar stadium. Since my release from prison I had stopped watching local football matches that I wasn't fixing. In fact, nowadays I rarely watch any football unless it involves two top-class teams. But at that time I had nothing much to do and was in contact with a friend who could place quick bets over the telephone so I decided to step inside the newly rebuilt Jalan Besar to take a peek. I walked in on a match between Gombak United and Liaoning Guangyuan, a Chinese team that participated in the S-League. The two teams seemed to be roughly at the same level and I was in two-minds on which team to place my wager. At half-time, Gombak was leading by two goals. As the second half began, I noticed that the Liaoning right-back and left-back defenders were totally out of position. The whole team looked like a herd of crazed animals running aimlessly on the pitch. Immediately, I called my friend up.

  "Give me 25 thousand on the Over and 25 thousand on Gombak scoring three goals in the second half".

  Liaoning conceded their third goal in a matter of seconds from my call, then came the fourth and the fifth; the match ended with a 5-nil loss for the Chinese team. I got up from my seat and left the stadium five minutes before the end of the game to cash in on my wager. As I made my way to the exit, I saw a fan that was perched nervously on the edge of his seat, still engrossed with the match.

  "My friend", I said, "go home. There is no use watching this game: it's fixed".

  A few weeks later, the Liaoning coach and players were picked up by the CPIB and arrested for fixing the match against Gombak, among others. The team manager had placed bets in China against his own team and had asked his players to lose. He has since gone missing and is still wanted by Singaporean authorities.

  The day after the Liaoning match, Zimbabwe landed in Vietnam for the Agribank Cup and was waiting for instructions. Since Thana's boss had refused to finance my fix, I had parted ways with Thana and Yap, so I called my friend Sivarajan to assist me.

  "Get two tickets to Vietnam", I told him. "We're traveling".

  The mother-fucker didn't check whether we were supposed to go to Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi. He bought two tickets to Ho Chi Minh City.

  "Fuck. We're supposed to go to Hanoi".

  From Ho Chi Minh City we took the first available flight to Hanoi. What I didn't know was that, while I was doing business with Zimbabwe's executive Rosemary, Thana's boss and his boys were secretly linking with Jumbojumbo. When Jumbojumbo had come to Malaysia for the Merdeka Cup he had figured that Thana's boss was the one with the money so he had completely cut me out to do business directly with Thana and Yap. I suspected that Jumbojumbo would double-cross me so, after landing in Hanoi, I went directly to the hotel where the Zimbabwean delegation was lodged. I called Rosemary and told her to meet me in front of Jumbojumbo's room. I knocked on his door, he opened and I barged inside the room.

  "Hello Jumbojumbo", I said. "Can I use your telephone for a second?"

  Before he could reply, I snatched Jumbojumbo's phone from his hand and locked myself in his bathroom. Rosemary was petrified. I looked through Jumbojumbo's contacts and found Yap's number. Fuck. I extracted the SIM card from Jumbojumbo's mobile phone and put it in my own phone, then walked out of the bathroom and returned his mobile.

  "Thank you Jumbojumbo, see you".

  I left the hotel room and immediately sent an SMS to Yap using Jumbojumbo's SIM card.

  "Hello David", it was Yap's nickname. "This is JJ, how are you? How much will you pay me per match?"

  "Has Wilson Raj tried to contact you?" replied Yap.

  "No, he hasn't".

  With only an hour left before kick off, the match still hadn't been put up for betting on gambling websites. I left the Zimbabwean delegation's hotel and rushed to the stadium, paid the ticket and walked in. As soon as I came out onto the stands, I saw Thana and Yap seated in front of me; they looked at me with an embarrassed smile pasted on their faces.

  "You mother-fuckers", I said. "What the fuck are you trying to do? I asked you if your boss wanted to do business and you said 'no'. I brought the team over on my own and now you want to do business with them behind my back?"

  They just stared at me.

  "Fuck", I held up my mobile phone. "I've been sending those messages to you, not Jumbojumbo".

  Thana turned towards Yap.

  "I told you, didn't I?" he said. "He is far more intelligent than you are. You're a fool".

  We all started laughing. The game had kicked off but was not up for betting. There was no money to be made so Zimbabwe went home empty-handed, as did we.

  CHAPTER VI

  Ah Blur

  After Zimbabwe's match in Hanoi, I returned home to Singapore where I went to live with my mother and life was normal again. I had money in my pockets and could take my sweet time to look around for any new opportunities that might arise. I was not fixing any local matches because I knew the risks; the CPIB had warned me and I had realized how much easier and safer it was to manipulate games abroad.

  In January 2008 the Africa Cup of Nations was being played in Ghana so I decided to travel there to see if some business could be done. African countries all look the same; you'll see people walking around with things on their heads trying to sell mineral water, mobile phone chargers or other senseless odds and ends. I was slowly coming to admire these people who worked hard under the hot sun to earn what to me was just pocket money. I felt sorry for them, but what could I do? I never understood why Africa hasn't made any progress over the years while countries like Singapore developed at a tremendous rate in just a couple of decades. Our leaders were probably as corrupt and self-centered as the African ones but at least they showed a remnant of sympathy for their people.

  Thana and Yap were also in Accra together with their friend Kelvin from Melaka, trying to fix matches through the good offices of their contact Abukari. We were not working together; they were there on their own and tried to approach the coach of Benin, a German national called Reinhard Fabisch, offering him a bribe. The attempt made the headlines on the following day and they were forced to back away. I, in turn, was lodged in Accra's Novotel Orchid Inn, where the Namibian team was staying, and decided to approach them. I began chatting with a Namibian official from their delegation and, through him, managed to get close to some of their players, including their goalkeeper, Athiel. I sat in front of Athiel and made my approach but he wasn't responsive. Finally he looked at me and made a gesture indicating that he could not hear; he was deaf. How the fuck am I supposed to discuss match-fixing with someone who cannot hear me?
I'm a resourceful guy so I took pen and paper and began writing down the score that I needed, in order to make him understand what I was asking of him. Unfortunately, before I could crack the singular language barrier between us, a Namibian footballer who played in the German league tipped off the delegation officials as to what I was trying to do. The officials lodged a complaint with the Confederation of African Football (CAF) then advised me to leave the hotel immediately. I bolted out of the door, sent a Ghanaian friend back in to recover my belongings, then left Accra on that very day together with Thana, Yap and their friend Kelvin; our efforts had been fruitless.

  After returning to Singapore empty-handed, I read in the local papers that Malaysia was set to host the Inter Continental Cup in May 2008. The Inter Continental Cup was an eight-team invitational football tournament staged in Kuala Lumpur featuring Under-23 national Olympic sides. It was a warm-up contest before the Beijing Olympics that were going to be held during that summer. Chile, Iraq and some other national teams had already confirmed their participation. The tournament was promoted by a private company called Octagon, run by a Singaporean businessman. I was quite popular with the Malaysia FA following the 200 thousand Ringgit sponsorship that I had provided for them, so they introduced me to the Octagon management. With a few months to go before the Inter Continental Cup, I sat around the table with the company's representatives and made my offer.

  "I am an agent and I have very strong connections in Africa", I explained. "I can bring two African national teams to Malaysia to play in your tournament".

  Octagon hired my services to invite the two teams but only wanted top-notch, credible African teams with a good FIFA ranking like Ghana and Nigeria; not Zimbabwe or the likes. I assured them that I would fulfill their request and they remitted 150 thousand dollars into my account to cover all expenses and my personal fee. When the money hit my account I could not resist the temptation and immediately gambled away 50 thousand dollars on Premier League matches. I was left without the funds necessary to arrange the fix so I tried to find another investor among my connections. I made a round of calls and soon the news of my fund-raising campaign came to Mega's ears, who asked my brother for advice. I don't usually talk to my brother because he is a very difficult person to deal with but he was on good terms with Mega at the time.

  "There is a guy I know", my brother told Mega. "Maybe he can find an investor. You tell Wilson".

  My brother's connection was a man named Murugan. When I was introduced to him, he claimed that we had already met in Singapore before my latest detention; I, however, failed to recognize his face. Murugan said that he used to be a runner for Bryan, Pal's right-hand man during the Malaysia Cup days. Through Bryan, Murugan had met a Chinese-Singaporean bookmaker called Tan Seet Eng, alias Dan Tan, and had begun working for him.

  I explained my plan with the Inter Continental Cup to Murugan and he relayed the information to his boss Dan Tan.

  "We need money for the airline tickets to fly the teams over", Murugan told Dan Tan. "Then they can dance to our tune".

  But Dan Tan was broke at the time so he passed the business on to yet another guy called Harry, a short, small Chinese who was a senior master agent with discrete betting credibility at either IBCbet or SBObet.

  IBCbet and SBObet are the two main Asian gambling websites that are used by punters in Singapore. Both companies are registered outside the Lion City, have annual turnovers in the billions of dollars and operate on an invitational basis. Before the advent of IBCbet and SBObet, the biggest bookmaker in Singapore was a guy called Ah Chong. I was told that Ah Chong had inherited his business from his father, who was already a bookmaker before I was born. Ah Chong was the top bookie in Singapore but was forced to abandon his activity after an ambush by the Criminal Investigation Department. During the sweep, his entire family had been locked up for 48 hours and his dogs had been killed. Ah Chong decided that enough was enough and handed his business over to another gentleman who now runs one of the two websites that I mentioned above. These companies are least bothered if a match is fixed or not; they have their control system to regulate the odds on a fixed match. When they see that an exorbitant amount of money is being wagered on one particular game, they immediately reduce the volume on that match and hang the odds in a way that will make it difficult for the fixer to hit them any further. Not many betting companies can hold a candle to the credibility and volumes that these two companies offer on the Asian market.

  Dan Tan's friend Harry was a senior master agent with one of these betting companies so he had a high line of credit to offer.

  "How much is needed?" Harry asked Murugan. "And make sure the teams can dance to my tune".

  Murugan came back to me and asked me what my price was.

  "80 thousand dollars", I told him, "that includes my share, tickets, everything. 80 thousand per match, that's my quote".

  Murugan called Harry again then came back to me.

  "Fine, 80 thousand", he said. "You just get us the result. Upon completion of the job, I will pick up your money and bring it to you. Harry will pay you, provided that the teams can listen and dance to his tune".

  "No problem, they can listen and they can dance", I ensured.

  Now that I had a sponsor to cover the expenses, I needed to find two top-notch African teams willing to participate in the Inter Continental Cup. Nigeria was already qualified for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and was busy looking for a training camp. A Nigerian agent that I knew called Prince linked me up with a contact in the Nigeria Football Federation (FF). I called Prince's contact and he confirmed that the Nigerian Olympic squad was willing to participate in the competition. I didn't go to Abuja myself because Prince guaranteed that he would sort out all the technicalities and put the team on an airplane to Malaysia for me.

  Nigeria was booked; done. Now I needed a second team and my target was Ghana; I had been there before and was sure that there was a good chance to get them on board. I called the Ghana FA, then began a correspondence with them via e-mail. At first, they told me that they too would be pleased to participate, then they said that they needed time for the paperwork and finally they stopped answering my e-mails altogether. I decided to fly to Ghana and speak with them face to face. I booked an appointment with the FA's General Secretary, then flew to Accra. While in Accra, I walked into a popular sports café called the Bus Stop and ordered a Redbull. When the waiter handed me the bill I was surprised to see that, since my last visit, the price of items had changed dramatically; their local currency, the Cedi, had been unilaterally locked to that of the US dollar. I marveled at the mysteries of African economy, settled the bill, and took a taxi to the headquarters of the Ghana FA. When I arrived, the FA's General Secretary was waiting for me in his office.

  "Is it the Under-23 team that you want?" he inquired.

  "Yes", I replied.

  "I'm sorry", he said, "we failed to qualify for the Olympics and have decided to disband the team".

  "Just assemble another one then", I insisted.

  "We cannot do that on such short notice", he objected.

  "OK", I gave up. "We'll speak again in the future".

  I still needed a second team so I decided to try my luck in the nearest country with a decent footballing record: Togo. As I sat in Accra's Kotoke International Airport waiting for my flight to Lome to board, I noticed that the place was plastered with signs saying: "Don't smuggle drugs! Don't spend the next 20 years counting bars".

  I thought the message to be very educational. Malaysia, for one, has always had a big problem with drug runners; many of them being hapless Indian drug mules that smuggle their hallucinogenic product to Singapore in exchange for pocket change: three thousand Malaysian Ringgit or even less. The problem is that many of them end up getting caught and sent to the gallows in Singapore where, until very recently, any drug offense was punished with hanging. If you traffic more than 15 grams of hard drugs or over one kilogram of marijuana you will face the death penalty. It is
totally absurd that in some parts of the world you can smoke pot legally and in Singapore you will be killed by the government if you do. In fact, the Singapore authorities enjoyed hanging people irrespective of the person's role; whether he be a drug mule or baron.

  The act of hanging someone is extremely cruel and inhumane. In Singapore, death sentences are carried out on Friday. The inmate will receive visits from his family and friends on the previous day, then he will get to order his favorite meal, which will be prepared by the prison's kitchen. He or she will also get to be photographed with his favorite clothes on, then, at dawn on Friday, their head will be enveloped in a black cloth and weights will be fastened to their ankles. Then they'll hear a click, the metal platform will open underneath their feet and down they'll go, struggling hopelessly for an additional instant of precious life. As I sat in the Accra airport, I thought that the advice given by the Ghanaian government could really come in handy in a place like Malaysia; at least these drug runners would know what they were up against before they decided to run the gauntlet. As I was absorbed in my assessment of Singapore's draconian legal system, I totally forgot about the stack of Ghanaian banknotes rolled up in my jeans pockets.

  I flew to Lome, visa on arrival. Prince had linked me up with a Togolese reporter and, through him, I scheduled a meeting with the Togolese FA's General Secretary.

  "All I need is a team", I pleaded with him.

  "We don't have an Under-23 team", he said. "No Olympic team either".

  "Fuck", I was beginning to lose my patience, "just give me any players who can wear a Togo jersey and can play some football. Just assemble a team".

  "We have a team that played in the Under-17 World Cup last year", the General Secretary suggested. "We could use them".

  They were eighteen-year-olds.

  "That would do".

  I proceeded to inform the Malaysia FA that Togo was willing to participate. Invitation, reciprocation, all set. As usual, the Malaysia FA would have handled the accommodation for the delegations at the Grand Bluewave Shah Alam Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, which by now offered them corporate rates. I booked a flight back to Singapore via Amsterdam. As I was flying out of Africa, I felt the thick stack of Ghanaian Cedis in my pocket and made a mental note to change them into dollars in the Netherlands. After landing, I immediately walked to the money exchange and placed the Cedis on the counter. The Dutchman behind the glass divisor was puzzled.