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

  "OK, I'm fighting 20 percent and the remaining 80 percent goes to HQ".

  Let's say you take Tottenham Hotspur to win against West Ham. With this mechanism, the agent is only fighting 20 dollars out of every 100 dollars that he places on the Spurs for you. If he loses, the gambling company will cover 80 dollars out of his 100 dollar loss. In exchange for this guarantee, the company will impose smaller volumes per click, which will make bigger bets much slower to place.

  Hong Kong dollar gambling websites, on the other hand, can adjust their betting volumes. One click can go up to ten thousand dollars for any league: Premier League, Serie A or even the lowest class Indian league. With the Hong Kong dollar, the senior master agent fights against his punters. If he loses, he pays: the betting company won't cover his loss; it's just you against me, locked against each other, and no one else will take your loss.

  The senior master agents are able to see what matches the punter is hitting. If you play Manchester Utd vs Liverpool, they'll say: "OK, you win, come pick up your money and come back another time to gamble some more".

  But if you play a dirty league, like an Indonesian league game, and you play a game that pays win-5, when you show up to collect your win, they'll know what you are up to. They will pay you the first time around, then they'll say: "Don't ever come back to me again".

  The agents are not asking you to lose, they are asking you to gamble. You can win ten bets in a row and they will say nothing, but you cannot play one dirty game, put your net to sleep and collect the winnings on the following Monday. That means you're a dirty bastard and that you're betting on fixed matches. They don't want or need a customer like that.

  No agent will ever give a one million dollar line of credit to any regular Joe, that's why nobody was giving Dan the credit that he needed: he hadn't proven his worth. Anyone can say, "I will fix Manchester United tomorrow", but then they would have to actually do it to gain credibility and credit. And Dan could not become a master agent himself because he had defaulted his payment once already; in the gambling market, when you lose your credibility, you will never be able to win it back.

  Dan used Harry, who was a senior master agent worth at least two to three million dollars by then, to boost his credibility in Europe. He had people in Europe, Bryan's people, who could fix matches so he sat them down in front of Harry.

  "What is it that you can do?" Harry asked them. "Can you fix this match? OK. This is the amount of credit that I can give you".

  Harry wanted to use his credit facility for something that was a sure winner; all Dan had to do was convince him that he could provide such circumstance. Harry began traveling frequently to Europe with Dan, one week at a time. They would travel together to watch the fixed games, then they would return to Singapore. Harry used his master agent website to provide user-names and passwords for Dan's associates so that they could place their bets, ten thousand dollars per click. He could provide the possibility of placing 200 thousand dollar bets on a single fixed match, setting that amount as the ceiling that each user could hit. Before Harry came on board, Dan and his partners had to lock the match long enough to place the entire amount that they wanted to bet; it was not uncommon, we often had to keep matches on hold for up to 30 minutes with no goals scored until our bets reached the desired volume. If you were betting on your own, 100 thousand dollars could be placed in 10-15 minutes; two or three hundred thousand could be placed within 20 minutes. If something happened before then, say a goal was scored, we would tell our teams that it should not be accounted for.

  "If a goal comes in the first half-hour, you still have to provide four more goals by the end of the match".

  The year was 2008. Dan was already his own boss and had rekindled the relationships with Bryan's old partners. He was in touch with FC Chiasso, Sandro and everybody else; the network was already consolidated and Harry was providing him with the betting power that he needed. We had begun doing business together on the African 2010 World Cup qualifiers, then, sometime in mid-2008, Dan asked Murugan to travel to Slovenia to collect some money from his European partners.

  "Board a flight to Zurich and then head over to Ljubljana", he ordered.

  Murugan called me to say that he was leaving for Europe, so I called Dan.

  "Dan", I said, "I'm under stress. Why don't you give me a ticket to Slovenia so that I can travel there with Murugan. I need a break; let me go along with him, just to chill and relax".

  Dan agreed. I gave him all my personal details, including a copy of my passport and my address, and he got his travel agency, Cosmos Travel, to issue my ticket.

  Murugan and I flew to Zurich, Switzerland. From there we drove to Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital, and checked into a hotel. Dan's European partners Vinko, Admir and Dino came to greet us at our hotel. It was the first time that I saw them in person. Murugan, who already knew them, made the introductions.

  Vinko was a big bald guy. At that time he was a junior coach with the Croatian club Dinamo Zagreb. He didn't speak much English but was a laughing and jovial fellow nonetheless; a very nice, friendly person. Admir and Dino were both Slovenian footballers. Admir was a defender, a center back, and was still playing in Hungary at the time. He was boastful and a bit arrogant. Just like Pal, Admir liked to think of us as his workers and not as his partners. Dino, whom had last played in Cyprus, was a goalkeeper; a really big, huge man. He didn't talk much, he was humble, soft spoken and a very nice person, compared to Admir, that is. With the exception of Vinko, the guys all spoke English well enough.

  Murugan told them that I was a guest, so they were really friendly with me.

  "You guys go for a massage", they suggested.

  After the massage, they took us to a Chinese restaurant for dinner.

  "This is Dan's favorite restaurant", said the three, "he loves the food here".

  While at dinner, we shared some match-fixing anecdotes and a few laughs. Admir told us that he once approached a player's father, and that the man had some sort of handicap. He was really good at imitating people, so he imitated the player's father limping and we all laughed.

  "You are the first person to approach the father of a player to fix a match instead of the player himself", someone said.

  Dan's European partners were very active in the Swiss league at that time. One of them mentioned their connection with the Swiss club AC Bellinzona: an Italian goalkeeper. This goalkeeper had accepted to fix a match with them but the agreed result had not materialized. Admir, Vinko and Dino then proceeded to threaten the goalkeeper who filed a police report, landing them into trouble.

  While mingling with Dan's European partners, I felt like a local guy from Singapore and Malaysia. I told them about some of my past fixes in Asia and the good connections that I had in Africa. We were getting to know each other, laughing over our accomplishments and sharing old stories, but no one was going to expose anything important that they had done on the first meeting: it is not nice for people to pry into one's business and ask about what games one has fixed, and I didn't want to sound like an investigator, so I didn't ask.

  That evening, after dinner, Admir, Dino and Vinko took us sightseeing in Ljubljana. After a couple of days spent in their company, Murugan and I headed back to Zurich. Then, as Murugan left for Singapore with Dan's money, I remained in Switzerland for a few days. When I returned to Singapore, I found out through Murugan that somebody had spoken to Admir, saying everything negative that there was to say about me.

  "Hey", said Murugan, "Admir called me to ask if you have a criminal record in Singapore and if you've been to prison before. He says that the Slovenian immigration called him seeking information about you".

  "Immigration?" I was surprised.

  "Admir said that they asked him about your assault against Ivica Raguz with the hockey stick", added Murugan.

  "It cannot be the immigration", I replied, "if the Slovenian border control had knowledge of my criminal history they would not have allowed me across the border in
the first place. They would have repatriated me straight back to Singapore".

  "I'm just relaying what Admir said", Murugan shrugged his shoulders.

  "Assuming that they had a copy of my record", I objected, "they still wouldn't have the details on the nature of my offenses. The file would just say: Section 350 of the penal code. Period".

  I put two and two together and realized that maybe Dan was not too comfortable with me going to Slovenia and meeting his partners.

  "Fuck you Murugan", I said, "you think I'm a small boy or what? The immigration you're talking about is none other than Dan. He thinks that I'm going to go down there and take his business away or something, so he poisoned these guys. It must be Dan, that mother-fucker".

  Dan does a lot of things on impulse, without thinking. I suppose that he may not have been able to sleep in peace after issuing my ticket. He probably walked home and began thinking: "Fuck, did I make a big mistake by sending Wilson to Slovenia? Fuck, this fellow is capable of taking my business away from me".

  Dan and I didn't know each other very well at that stage, so he had probably spoken to Admir, Dino and Vinko about me behind my back.

  "Be careful with this guy", he probably told them, "he's very dangerous, he's got a criminal record. He's a violent person".

  We are people who like to make money but we are not violent. Dan, Admir and Dino are not violent either, and that's probably why Admir called Murugan.

  "Has this guy been to prison before?" he asked.

  I didn't have any interest in undercutting Dan's business. I'm sure that I could have done it, but it's not my style; it's not in my nature to go behind my partner's back and steal his business. I have my business, you have yours; I may not have a flawless character but I do have certain principles. Plus, I didn't know the degree of trust that there was between Dan and his European associates. If I had opened my mouth and said, "Why don't I introduce you guys to another guy who can offer you better odds", I would have looked bad from every angle. I wasn't brought up to fuck someone who has been nice to me; I fuck with people who fuck with me.

  But Dan was nonetheless paranoid.

  "Mother-fuckers", he must have thought, "they'll undercut me".

  On October 10th, 2008, I was back in business: I brought Pakistan to Malaysia for an international friendly match.

  "We hardly have a team at all", the Pakistan FA said over the telephone. "Take my word for it, our team is so weak that there is a good chance of you winning without us doing anything".

  When Pakistan arrived in Kuala Lumpur, I tried to convince the players to lose the match but they were not up to it.

  "Noooo, nooo", they all said.

  Cricket fixing is so rife in Pakistan and India but when it comes to football, you cannot corrupt a Pakistani or an Indian player. Their nations are rated as some of the most corrupt in the world but their footballers cannot be bought. Either way, the match was not picked up for betting, making us incur a substantial business loss.

  After the Pakistan match, Dan, Admir, Dino and I began planning the 2008 Merdeka Cup, which was to be played in Malaysia in October. Once again, we offered the Malaysia FA the opportunity to feature two foreign national teams in the tournament free of charge. World Wide Events and Sports International would have absorbed the price of their tickets.

  Dan and his partners had put their European business on hold to turn their attention to the Merdeka Cup. Admir and Dino had become Dan's partners and would travel with him anywhere that money could be made. By then, they and Dan had become the shareholders of a match-fixing syndicate.

  "Come, there is money to be made", Dan would propose, "I'll give you a share".

  The two foreign teams that we provided for the 2008 Merdeka Cup were Sierra Leone and Mozambique. Both of them were Under-20 teams. I didn't need to fly to Sierra Leone, they were not a problem. While fixing the Sierra Leone match in South Africa in June of that year, I had built a relationship with one of the Sierra Leone FA's officials, a guy called Abu Bakar. A few months before the cup, I sent Abu Bakar an e-mail.

  "Just assemble a team", it read, "I will pay the FA, I will pay for everything. Wilson Raj".

  Abu Bakar assembled a Sierra Leone team that could dance to our tune and sent them over to Malaysia.

  I didn't go to Maputo, Mozambique, either. Somehow I got in touch with somebody from the Mozambique FA by telephone, an English-speaker.

  "We would like to invite Mozambique to play in a friendly football tournament in Malaysia", I explained, "is it possible for you to come and participate? We will pay for the delegation's tickets and for your accommodation".

  Then I proceeded to cautiously describe the possibility of making good money while in Malaysia.

  "Would you all be interested?" I inquired.

  "Get us the airline tickets first", was their reply.

  We were almost there, but we needed the money for the airline tickets and Dan couldn't come up with enough cash to fly both teams in at once. Sierra Leone was supposed to travel first and play against Malaysia, but since Mozambique would not agree to participate until they had the tickets in hand, they were placed in the fast lane and landed in Malaysia first for their match against Bangladesh. I met the Mozambique coach and his assistant in the Grand Bluewave Shah Alam Hotel before the match and instructed them.

  "OK", I explained, "we are hitting on a total of three goals and all of them have to be scored during the second half of the match. You can score or you can concede, it's up to you".

  The coach agreed to follow my instructions, so I handed him an advance payment of five thousand US dollars.

  Mozambique vs Bangladesh was played on the evening of October 16th, 2008. I was sitting on Mozambique's bench and was running the show from there while Dino sat in the stands with Murugan.

  When Dino saw me sitting on the bench next-to the coach he exclaimed: "What the fuck? You mean, you can sit on the bench? This could never happen in Europe. It's totally ridiculous".

  He was shocked and was laughing uncontrollably when I called him.

  "Fuck", he said, "there is live betting and you're sitting on the bench and using a mobile phone, saying: 'How many goals do you want?' Fuck, give us three goals".

  While Dino, Murugan and I were at the stadium watching the match, Dan, Admir, Dan's agent and his Chinese money-courier Poh Chee Leng were in a hotel room in front of a computer clicking on the website to place their bets; they were placing the bets on their own at that point because the relationship between Dan and Harry had deteriorated.

  The first half of the match ended nil-nil. Then the second half started and, after five minutes, I turned to speak to the coach.

  "We need three goals. It doesn't matter which team scores them", I reminded him. "Can you get your team to concede? We're running out of time, either you score or you concede".

  He just sat there like an idiot, not doing anything. I could tell that he was not the least bothered by what I was saying to him.

  "Look here", I insisted, "I can give you an extra. An additional 10-15 thousand dollars, but can you please make sure that we get the three goals?"

  "Can you give me the money now?" he suddenly replied.

  "What the fuck! How can I give you the money now? After the game".

  The coach just sat there watching the match and not doing anything to get us our three goals. I withheld myself from landing a punch straight into his face. Then, to make matters worse, one of the officials from the Malaysian FA came over to me.

  "Excuse me, sir", he said, "your name is not on the team list, you cannot sit here, you need to leave the bench".

  I had no choice but to leave the bench and could not play on the scene anymore. There was nothing left for me to do. The match ended 1-0 in favor of Mozambique. They scored a late goal and we lost our bet.

  We were all depressed as we sat in the car on our way back to the hotel. We had no life in our bodies; sometimes losing a bet can do that to you. I was sitting in the back seat
with Murugan, while Dino was sitting in the passenger seat.

  "Fuck that", I ran the story over in my head, "we paid the team, we paid the FA, we brought them all the way here. Fuck, we even gave them a deposit, and it's all fucked".

  The whole thing did not reflect well on me at all; I looked hopeless. Then Dino's phone rang, it was somebody calling him from Slovenia. Dino was silent for a short while, then he uttered: "Katastrofa".

  It's catastrophe, but in Slovenian it's 'katastrofa'.

  I looked at Murugan and he looked at me, we wanted to laugh, but couldn't. I was really pissed off at the Mozambique coach. That night Murugan and I did not return to the hotel; I knew that Dan's agent was furious and I didn't want to face him just yet. He had asked me before the match if I could call the match off in case of a fuck up like I had done with Togo and I had said 'yes'. But the mother-fucking coach was like a buffalo who would not budge. Throughout the entire night Murugan and I received non-stop calls from Dan who kept asking us what the fuck had happened, then, in the morning, we decided to return to the hotel and face Dan's agent. As soon as I walked in their room, Dan's agent rushed towards me and held me by the throat. I pushed him away and we were about to exchange blows when Dan and Admir stepped in and separated us. I left the room and went downstairs. Dan came with me.

  "Wilson", he asked, "why can't you just relax and let him vent out his anger?"

  "I didn't fuck you guys up", I said to Dan. "I didn't double cross you. Things just didn't play out the way I thought that they would. The coach fucked me up".

  "Let's just focus on the remaining matches", said Dan. "We'll find a way out of this mess".

  Next, I went up to the coach's room with the intention of hammering the fucker but Murugan tried to calm me down.

  "Brother", he said, "stop, stop. If you hit him, things will blow out of proportion and we may not be able to continue with our plan".