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

  "This was a payback game for the fuck up with Bosnia", he told them.

  Pal did not have so much as the shadow of a conscience. I did not agree with him and decided to give the players some of my own money. I met them on the day following the match and handed them 50 thousand Ringgit. I told them that another 50 would be coming their way before they left Malaysia. Unfortunately, Yap could not arrange for all of my money to arrive on time and I was not able to settle my balance with them. The poor boys called me non-stop from the airport as they were boarding the airplane back to Zimbabwe, but I was in no position to help them and they returned home with only half of the money that I had promised them.

  CHAPTER IV

  A ten-year holiday

  Singapore is a society where money revolves from one hand to another at the speed of light. Horse betting, football betting, lotto; money is always changing hands. If you are broke, there are a number of people that you can contact to ask for loans: friends, money lenders and illegal loan sharks. If I were in Singapore today, I could stand before somebody and take a 100 thousand dollar loan from them on the nail. But if it's Malaysia we're talking about, nobody knows me and nobody is going to trust me with 100 thousand dollars. That's why we cannot function without being in Singapore; our place is where the money is moving, always.

  In early 1997, after our success in Malaysia's Dunhill Cup, a series of arrest warrants were issued in Singapore by the CPIB for match-fixing in a number of domestic football matches. Pal, Ah Seng, the referee Ramasamy, Mike and several of my friends from Balestier Khalsa FC were picked up during the sweep. I was still in Malaysia when the shit went down and I became a wanted man all over again.

  Mike was the weakest among those arrested and the first to start singing; he turned prosecution witness and testified against Pal, Ramasamy and Ah Seng. He also fingered me as one the masterminds behind the fixes in exchange for a reduced three-month prison sentence. When he saw himself cornered, Ramasamy also began to sing the same tune.

  "Wilson introduced me to Pal to fix matches", he told the CPIB.

  I knew that he and Pal had fixed matches together but my intention as a friend when I introduced the two was to help Ramasamy. I was charged with common intention for introducing a referee to a bookie; that was my crime. It was like being charged for introducing an underage girl to Berlusconi.

  Finally, the Balestier players also joined the choir. They had each taken money for the three games that they had fixed with Mike and Ah Seng and had immediately started spending it profusely. Their wives had begun renovating their flats and were aware that their respective husbands had taken bribe money so the CPIB decided to use them against me.

  "We know that Wilson Raj is involved", they said to the players. "If you don't admit that Wilson gave you money, we are going to pursue charges against your wives as well".

  "OK", the players were in a tight spot, "Wilson Raj gave us 180 thousand dollars for these three matches".

  Now the Singapore authorities were looking for me not just for the common intention of introducing a referee to a bookie, but also for paying football players to throw their club's matches.

  When Pal returned to Singapore from Malaysia he was immediately picked up by the CPIB. He was tried and convicted to prison time together with the rest of those arrested. I decided to remain at large for a while and see if things would cool down.

  I had made over a million Ringgit from the Dunhill Cup so I had enough money in my pockets and no real reason to go back to Singapore to face the charges against me. From Kuala Lumpur I traveled to the UK with Thana, Yap and Rajah, my schoolmate who had stolen the football boots when we were 18. Once again, I used a friend's passport to enter the UK and spent three months watching top Premier League matches and wagering on them. I was placing my bets through Yap and the fucker was cheating me on the odds: if Man Utd was giving 9-5, he would quote me 8-5. I stayed in the UK for a while and just gambled and gambled until all my money was gone and I was left with no other option but to return to Malaysia.

  By then it was mid-June 1997 and the FIFA World Youth Championship was taking place in Malaysia, so I just sat back and watched the matches. I even tried a halfhearted approach with some of the Ivory Coast players in their Johor Bahru hotel. I followed them inside the lift but I did not go through with my plan because I realized that they spoke French and I didn't. There was a language barrier and security was pretty tight. I was already in trouble in Singapore and I didn't want to risk getting busted in Malaysia as well. Next, I tried approaching some of the players from Ghana and they seemed agreeable at first but I was not very comfortable executing the business with them because they were not back-line players. I prefer back-line players: the two central defenders, the last man stopper and the goalkeeper. If you can get three back-line players on your payroll then you can execute a fix because, when you want to lose, the attackers can't help you.

  "What can I do?" I thought, "I cannot survive in Malaysia without money. One way or the other, I have to return home".

  In 1998 I tried my luck and returned to Singapore from Malaysia. I knew that the police were hot on my trail so I tried to lie low and avoid trouble. I lived at a friend's house and, over a year since his betrayal, I made up with Danny and started hanging out with him again.

  "Let bygones be bygones", I said to him.

  One night Danny and I were hanging out at a pub in Bugis, a neighborhood near Singapore's Little India, when suddenly two Indian-looking guys came up to me. One of them rushed towards me and grabbed my shirt very tightly near my neck. He didn't say, "you're under arrest", or anything like that, he simply grabbed my shirt and held tight. Fights and clashes were frequent at that particular pub so I figured that they had mistaken me for somebody else.

  "I think you got the wrong guy", I said, as I tried to wrestle loose from his grip. "Excuse me, I don't think I'm the one you're looking for".

  "Handcuff him", said the man while turning to the other Indian guy.

  The moment I heard the words "handcuff him", I knew that the two were policemen. I punched the one holding my shirt straight in the face and he fell over like a pack of cards. Not that I'm a trained boxer or anything; I just acted on impulse. Then I tried to run, I'm a fast runner and would have been nowhere to be found within seconds, but the policeman hadn't let go of my shirt and was pulling me down along with him. My mind worked quickly; I tore my shirt buttons open and wriggled myself out of the policeman's grip, leaving him on the ground with my torn shirt in his hand. Before I knew it, the second policeman was onto me, trying to pull me down.

  "Danny, give me hand!" I shouted.

  I swung around and kicked the policeman as Danny, who had overcome the initial surprise, came to my rescue by standing between us.

  "Where is your arrest warrant?" asked Danny, as I sped in the opposite direction.

  Danny had provided me with some additional time to flee. As I ran off bare-chested, I looked back to see him being brought down and handcuffed by the officers. Thanks to my rediscovered friend I had managed to escape. After going into hiding I sought news of Danny and found out that he was charged with obstructing enforcement officials from performing their duty. And that was not the end of it: the police had searched him and found 50 porn DVDs on his person. Porn is banned and illegal in Singapore. You can watch it on-line but can't own a DVD with an x-rated movie on it; silly as it may sound, that's our law. In Singapore you can be charged for farting in public.

  "What the fuck does a guy need 50 porn DVDs for?" I wondered when I heard the news. "I can understand having a couple close at hand for personal gratification, but to carry 50 of them on your person is totally absurd".

  Danny wasn't convicted for preventing the cops from arresting me but for owning the 50 porn DVDs. He was sentenced to five months in prison because he could not come up with the money to pay the 25 thousand dollar fine that they had slapped on him. Unfortunately, I could not help him because I too was broke.

  A
t that time I was dating a girl that Danny would later get married to. She knew him well and, in hindsight, I think that the two might have made some sort of deal with the police to give away my whereabouts. One night, as the girl and I drove away from a pub, I noticed three vehicles tailgating me closely. Suddenly, the cars pulled up to the sides and tail of my vehicle. We were at a traffic junction and the traffic lights were red. I tried to move but there was a taxi right in front of me. Then about ten guys hopped out of the three cars and walked up to mine; I surrendered and they arrested me. Strangely enough, the girl was allowed to leave in a cab instead of being brought down to the police station for questioning together with me. She left without so much as a look behind her. The policemen handcuffed me and escorted me to the CPIB building and into a room where an officer in plain clothes came up to me and threw a punch straight into my face.

  "How dare you hit one of my officers", he screamed.

  "You want to fight me?" I replied. "Uncuff me first".

  Just then, another officer intervened and pulled the first officer away from me. I was escorted inside an interrogation room where I was kept in handcuffs for the whole night even though I had nowhere to run. The following morning, they read the charges against me.

  "You've got nine charges for corrupting football players", the officer smiled, "and three for bribing the referee Ramasamy".

  There were four policemen looking after me at the police station; three men and a woman. The stupid fuckers loosened up the handcuffs to let me use the bathroom and wash my face before I was transferred to remand prison. The cuffs felt very loose around my wrists; I slipped one of my hands out of them quite easily and waited for the right opportunity to make my move.

  As I was being accompanied towards the police vehicle that was to take me to remand prison, I slipped the second handcuff from my wrist and took off running. I made a desperate dash for the front gate but it was too high to clear with a single jump so I tried climbing it. I wasn't half way to the top of the gate when one of the officers caught hold of my leg; then another guy grabbed my other leg and down I went. Had I cleared the gate, the four fuckers would have lost their job for negligence.

  I was taken to Queenstown remand prison where I was locked up for a couple of weeks before being transferred to court where I was formally charged. Bail was set at 300 thousand Singapore dollars, an amount that was far out of my reach at the time. I was then sent back to remand prison to wait for the actual trial to begin. This time around I was psychologically prepared for what would come next; I already knew the prison's lifestyle, routine and how to kill time while inside.

  I first went to trial for allegedly paying the Balestier FC players to fix three matches in the local league together with Mike. He and some of the players had turned prosecution witnesses against me and had obtained immunity from the court. Ah Seng, on the other hand, had already been convicted for the same three charges that the prosecutors were bringing against me. I still remember the judge, Ms. Jasvender Kaur; she was a specialist in handling football-related offenses. She had been promoted to the office of the District Judge after being the prosecutor in Pal's case at the end of the Malaysia Cup.

  My family hired a lawyer to represent me. The first thing he asked was for me to be uncuffed during trial.

  "Objection, your honor", the prosecution immediately said. "The accused is a dangerous individual who is being tried, among other things, for attempting to escape custody".

  "In my courtroom", Judge Kaur replied, "an accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Uncuff him".

  During the trial my friends from my social football club Brazilian Boys were made to parade in front of me and testify against me. The star witness was Manap, a very close friend of mine. He would have never spoken against me without a good reason but, when he took the stand, Manap said: "Wilson gave me 180 thousand dollars outside Tampines Stadium on July 28th, 1996".

  Fucker. Thank God that the date was wrong. On that day I was still in the United States with Pal and Uncle. I couldn't bring the bosses to testify in court but I could ask the judge to check. I took the stand.

  "Your honor", I said, "I was in the United States of America on that day. It is unlikely that I could have been in two places at once. Unfortunately, I've lost my passport since but I'm sure that I could not have given them the money on that date. The witness is lying".

  I had already told the senior investigator about my trip to the US after they had read the charges against me but my statements had not been recorded by the CPIB and the officer had completely ignored me. Judge Kaur, instead, was a fair and scrupulous judge.

  "Check when he entered and left the US", she told the prosecution.

  In the following hearing, Manap was called back to the stand.

  "In your account", said Judge Kaur, "you said that the accused gave you the money on July 28th, 1996. Are you very sure that he gave it to you on that day?"

  "Yes", Manap replied without hesitating, "I am very sure of the date".

  "OK", said the judge, "thank you very much, you may go".

  The court contacted the US embassy asking for the precise dates of my entry into and exit from their territory. The embassy came back to them confirming that I was in the United States on July 28th, thus proving the prosecution's witness unreliable. Judge Kaur had given Manap a chance to rectify his account but he hadn't seized it. If he had said, "I'm not sure", then I would have been in huge trouble. The other witnesses that took the stand were just as bad; they couldn't get their stories straight and the entire trial ended up becoming a complete fuck up for the prosecution.

  Judge Kaur was the same magistrate who had previously convicted Ah Seng for the three matches in question so, on the day of the final submissions, she dangled the charges against me in front of the prosecutor's nose and asked: "Can you please enlighten me as to why you are charging this man with the same charges regarding the very same players and matches for which another man has already been convicted? I was the presiding judge in that trial".

  Throughout the entire proceeding, Judge Kaur had never lost her cool, but now she was furious.

  "As a court officer", she continued, "I expect honesty from you, Mr. Prosecutor".

  Judge Kaur didn't give the prosecutor a chance to reply; she was all over him. The judges knew that charging and acquitting an accused would have undermined the credibility of the police; in Singapore, the burden of providing evidence of one's innocence rests solely on the defendant, but certain lines weren't to be overstepped.

  "Don't be dishonest", she thundered. "You don't have to obtain a conviction at all costs".

  Judge Kaur finally acquitted me on all charges for the three Balestier matches. Everyone present in the courthouse knew that I was involved in match-fixing, only the charges were wrong. How can two people fix the same match?

  Unfortunately, the charges of common intention for introducing the referee Ramasamy to Pal stood. I had known Ramasamy for a very long time, just like I had known Manap, who had deliberately lied under oath. I knew that neither would have testified against me in normal circumstances. Both Ramasamy and Manap had completed their prison time when I was arrested, but the prosecution forced them to take the stand anyways; in Singapore they can twist your arm if they want to. In Ramasamy's case, they had threatened to drag his sister to court for receiving the bribe money from Mike. Finally, Pal also took the stand and testified against me to save his own ass from going to prison; I did not expect anything less from him. I was found guilty and sentenced: 16 months for introducing Ramasamy to Pal and an additional ten months for attempting to escape police custody. In total, 26 months, of which I served two-thirds: 18 months.

  I came out in March 2000 and things were looking especially grim. I had no money in my pockets and immediately went back to the same old ritual; I started doing business with a friend of mine, Siva, a golf teacher. Siva had earned a degree in golf management in San Diego, California; so long as you speak a little English an
d pay your tuition fee, you can easily come back from San Diego with a golfing degree. But Siva didn't have the patience to stand on the fairway for hours at a time under the hot sun and teach; he was too lazy and just wanted fast money so he became a match-fixer and was actively involved in football betting. Siva had made good money during the Malaysia Cup and that is how he had paid his golfing degree in the United States. When I met him after my release, Siva was in business with Lutz, a German goalkeeper who played for Geylang United, and with Mirko, an Australian player for Sembawang Rangers.

  Sometime in July 2000, Siva and I were waiting for Lutz and Mirko to come home after training when we saw Ivica Raguz walk past us. Raguz was a Croatian footballer who played in Woodlands Wellington FC, a local Singapore club. He was the best player in his team; a very good offensive midfielder. Woodlands Wellington was set to play against Geylang United, Lutz's team, within days. Siva wanted Geylang to win the fixture, but Lutz was just a goalkeeper so he couldn't do much to help his team score. Ivica Raguz, on the other hand, was Woodlands' main man, their nucleus. Removing Ivica from the Woodlands lineup would have been like taking Andrea Pirlo out of Juventus FC; he was their backbone, their engine room; you take him out and the team cannot function.

  As we watched Ivica walk past us, Siva and I explored the scope of possible solutions to our dilemma.

  "If we knock this guy's leg", I said, "fuck, his team is going to lose".

  "Why don't we get somebody to do that and place a wager on Geylang to win", said Siva. "30 thousand or so".

  "Sounds like a plan", I commented.

  Honestly, I think that this was one of the dumbest things that I ever did in my entire life. Siva and I hired a few Bangladeshi guys to do the job; I was supposed to oversee them while Siva was tasked with placing the bets. And he did: 30 thousand Singapore dollars on Geylang United to win against Woodlands Wellington. The wager was placed and now the job needed to be carried out, but the Bangladeshi guys pulled out at the last minute.