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

  "Who is this mother-fucker that beat my company for 2.5 million?" he inquired.

  Anyone in my shoes would have immediately returned to Singapore to collect his money and retire from gambling and match-fixing altogether; but I am a punter so I seized the opportunity to take my wagers a step higher. I began betting 500 thousand dollars at a time on the UEFA Champions League and on a number of other random matches in hopes of multiplying my winnings even further. In less than a week's time, before I even set foot back in Singapore, over 1.5 million dollars had evaporated. I was in pain but life goes on; easy come, easy go, they say; and I still had about a million dollars worth of credit left. Nowadays I am struggling to keep afloat and often look back on my stupidity. There are many nights when I go to bed and gather my memories to think about what I could have done differently. I could have done this; I could have done that: life is all about hope. I made millions several times in my life: in 1996; in 1997; in 2009 it happened twice; and finally, in 2010. All five times I let the money slip between my fingers like worthless dust, but it's not going to happen again. I've learned my lesson the bitter way.

  From Brazil, I flew to Chile to follow the FIFA Under-20 Women's World Cup. I hadn't made any previous arrangements with any of the teams involved. I usually started out by hunting for squads that had lost their first matches, then I would step in to do business. The Democratic Republic of Congo had lost their first two fixtures but were a French-speaking lot; there was a language barrier between us because I don't speak French so I didn't try to approach them.

  From Chile I hopped onto a flight to Jamaica and landed just in time for the Caribbean Cup, a qualifying tournament for the CONCACAF Gold Cup which was to be held the following summer in the United States. The competition was taking place in Montego Bay, on the northwestern coast of the Caribbean island. Jamaica is a beautiful place: crystalline sea and white beaches; you see the sunset; you see the sunshine. If you ask me, the Caribbean region is the best place to live on the face of Earth but Jamaica in particular is not my kind of country. It is way too poor, very dangerous and thoroughly corrupt. I also found it difficult to understand Jamaicans when they spoke; their accent was very strange. In fact, the entire Caribbean region is fucked up accent-wise. When they speak, you don't understand shit. I remember chatting with some guys from Trinidad and Tobago.

  "Oh, oh, hold on there", I halted their senseless blabber, "when you speak to me you have to speak reeeal slow because I'm from Asia and I can't understand a word you're saying".

  The jokers didn't speak, they sang.

  I planned to approach the teams that were going to qualify for the Gold Cup and try to build a relationship with their players ahead of the tournament. Grenada qualified first so I strove to make friends with some members of their delegation and dished out money to all of them.

  Then I hooked up with Cuba, which had also qualified for the cup. I was planning to give one thousand dollars to each of the Cubans, so I pulled out a thick stack of banknotes from my side pocket. We are in the match-fixing business, you know, we are accustomed to handling large sums of money. I counted: ten banknotes, ten, ten, ten, one thousand dollars each. As I handed the first Cuban player the banknotes one at a time, he stared at me wide-eyed.

  "Are these real or are you just giving us worthless pieces of paper?" he asked.

  "Of course they're real", I said matter-of-factly.

  They were incredulous.

  "Nobody hands out money just like that", they said as they turned the notes over in their fingers and inspected them closely to see whether they were counterfeit.

  These guys had never seen one thousand dollars at once, let alone the stack. I quickly secured a relationship with the Cubans, then flew back to Singapore.

  By the end of December 2008 I was on the move again. I flew to Bahrain where their national team was set to play a friendly match against Syria. Bahrain has a tiny population, a semi-professional football league and no football support at all. When matches are played, there will be barely twenty people in the entire stadium. Manama, the country's capital, is a very nice city; a miniature Dubai. Sex, alcohol and women are readily available so convoys of cars from Saudi Arabia cross the bridge into Bahrain on Thursday night and travel back on Saturday after a two-night blowout.

  In Bahrain everything revolves around the tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The Shiites are a very poor minority who all work as taxi drivers. They are pariahs in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia but, if you travel across the Persian Gulf to Iran and you are a Sunni, then you'll be the pariah because the Shiites rule there. My girlfriend back then was a Muslim and I often discussed the circumstance with her.

  "We Indians report to so many gods but we have no trouble between us", I said to her, "no ethnic wars and such. You Muslims all report to Allah but the Sunni and Shiite bomb and kill one-another. What is your problem?"

  In Bahrain, it is all about the Khalifa family; they run the show and rule the country as if they were one man.

  "The Khalifas give us everything but we are still slaves", people told me. "We have no right to speak out".

  I was well in touch with the circumstance; we were slaves ourselves in Singapore. The ruling party, the People's Action Party (PAP), had complete control over us. Civil servants were forced to vote for the ruling party in fear of losing their jobs. Politicians always prefer to keep the people in the dark so that they can manipulate them with greater ease. Although Singapore was an English-speaking country, satellite TV was banned there until 1995 and we had to travel all the way to Batam island in Indonesia to watch World Cup qualifiers and other football matches. We were far more developed than Indonesia but still had to cross the Singapore Strait to watch satellite channels like the BBC. News from around the world would have informed the people of Singapore about what happened outside and the ruling party didn't like the idea one bit. I am not an anti-PAP but I think that a good dose of opposition parties in Parliament are healthy for democracy. Singaporeans don't stand up for their rights. They're like sheep in a herd; so long as there is food on the table, who the fuck worries?

  While in Bahrain I got acquainted with some of the Syrian national team players who were there for the match against Bahrain.

  "I can help you do business in the Syrian national league", one of them boasted. "You come over to Syria and we'll see what can be done".

  I tucked his number away for future reference.

  You see, money is the root of corruption and of everyone's worries. Everyone needs money to make their next move in life and those that don't have any are, of course, the most vulnerable ones. If you stand in front of players who have never had much money and offer them a good sum for their trouble, they will seldom back away. Sometimes Arab players, if they are very pious Muslims, will try to argue that it is 'haram' - an Arabic term for 'sinful' - for them to accept a bribe.

  "If you are so pious", I often asked them, "why don't you donate half of your money to the local mosque?"

  These fuckers failed to understand that Mubarak, Ben Ali, Khadafi and Assad's families were getting richer by the minute and that they saw nothing 'haram' about it. Fortunately, not all Muslim players are that pious; most are willing to bend for cash just like the rest of us.

  For match-fixers and gamblers like myself, instead, money was just a number on the screen of a betting website; a mere digit. Our humble beginnings and the ease with which we won and lost our fortunes led us not to treasure the wealth that we accumulated.

  On December 29th Bahrain played their friendly match against Syria in Manama. We tried to manipulate the game but things didn't work out as planned. We didn't have enough players on our side and no goalkeeper so we didn't follow up on the fix. The match ended 2-2.

  After the game I managed to be introduced to some influential members of the Bahrain FA. I met their then-General Secretary Ahmed Jassim who introduced me to the all-powerful Sheikh Ali bin Khalifa al Khalifa, the then-deputy chairman of the Association an
d its current president. Of course neither of the two was aware of my match-fixing activities; they were simply glad to have found someone that could enlist foreign teams willing to play against Bahrain.

  "So long as somebody comes here to play", they ingenuously admitted, "we are happy".

  We struck a deal: invite, reciprocate, match. Easy. The rest would be up to me, from the reservation of the visiting team's airline tickets to their accommodation. My relationship with the Bahrain FA had commenced wonderfully.

  In early January 2009, Murugan and I flew to Doha, Qatar, where we were joined by Dan for the Under-19 International Friendship Tournament. We approached the Syrian Under-19 team and asked them to lose against Serbia but, during the entire duration of the game, their coach was screaming incessantly to his players from the sideline. Dan and I were seated in the stands and watched on as the match ended in a goalless draw.

  "How the fuck are the Syrian boys supposed to lose a game if this fucker keeps on screaming for the full 90 minutes?" complained Dan.

  In the stadium we met some Serbian team officials and Dan openly discussed match-fixing with them. I reckoned that he had a very loose tongue. Then, during the flight back to Singapore, Dan kept attracting the attention of the stewardess by cracking silly jokes. He didn't behave like a boss at all; he just wanted to have fun and be the center of attention. He craved the spotlight like a child in a classroom. Dan was a pleasant person to be with because he was a really jovial, nice guy but I also sensed a darker side to him, one that was not visible at first glance. After the initial spectacle offered to the smiling stewardess, Dan and I began recollecting our common acquaintances back home and the subject of Pal somehow came up. I relayed to Dan what I had heard from Thana about the floodlight scam and the money that Pal had allegedly lost on the 2001 Fenerbahce vs Barcelona UEFA Champions League match in Istanbul, Turkey.

  "You know this game, Fenerbahce vs Barcelona?" I asked. "I heard that it backfired on Pal big-time".

  Dan turned to face me with a stern stare.

  "Fuck you, Pal did this game", he said fiercely. "I did this match. It was me and two other Chinese guys. One of them, the one I was sharing the business with, is now dead. Somebody killed him in Thailand because he owed too much money to too many people".

  All this while I had thought it was Pal.

  "I got the floodlights idea from Bryan", continued Dan. "I traveled to Turkey with a Chinese friend and together we contacted another Chinese called Fu Chin who lived in Turkey and was married to a Turkish woman; he helped us execute the scheme. Fu Chin had very potent links in Moldova and Turkey and knew a high-ranking official in the Turkish army whom he co-opted to help us. It took a lot of planning: Fu Chin surveyed the job and studied the teams' track records. No Spanish club had ever won an official fixture on Turkish soil so we decided to put our money on Fenerbahce to win the match. Fu Chin then got the Turkish army official to hire a high-flier who would switch off the stadium's floodlights on command. Everything was set and the odds were even but, by half-time, Barcelona was ahead by two goals and was slated for certain victory. At that point, we decided to kill the floodlights. I was hoping that, by leaving everyone in the dark, the match would be declared null and my bets void, but the whole thing blew up in my face".

  "So you took the loss?" I asked him.

  "Yes. And a big one. We didn't know that there was a generator in the stadium. The lights were turned back on and the match was allowed to continue. The Chinese guy that I had shared the business with was already indebted and thought that he could solve his problems with that single fix, instead, he was landed even deeper in debt. Unlucky mother-fucker; the match destroyed him. He tried to hide from his creditors in Thailand but they eventually found him and finished him off".

  "The floodlight scam was my idea, not Bryan's", I affirmed.

  Dan remained silent for a while.

  "Rather throw a grenade in the stadium", he finally said.

  On the following day Dan, Admir and I were off to Hanoi, Vietnam, where, with the help of Fadi, we planned to rig an AFC Asian Cup qualification match between Lebanon and Vietnam. Admir and the other Europeans would come to Asia whenever there was business to be done. They would stay in a hotel for a couple of days and would then fly back to Europe. My relationship with Admir was still, "hi", "bye", and, "how are things?"; there was never a good chemistry between us and I was trying my level best to keep at a distance from him because I didn't want to incur Dan's paranoia again.

  While in Hanoi, we arranged a meeting with the Lebanese players. We asked them for a total of three goals; they agreed, delivered and Vietnam cruised 3-1 over Lebanon. Before returning to Singapore, we paid the Lebanese players for the excellent performance and they informed us that they would be traveling to Bangkok, Thailand, on the following week to play in the Thai King's Cup. We agreed that we would meet them there to do business together again.

  Unlike Admir and Dino, I didn't have a share in Dan's syndicate at the time and would only receive a cut for the single matches that I fixed for them. Dan was paying me 30 thousand dollars for each successful game. He and the other syndicate members were betting and fixing games on their own but didn't discuss the details thereof with me. I didn't care to ask how much they wagered on the fixtures that I organized for them: one million, two million; so long as they paid me my 30 thousand dollar cut, I was fine. But I was not just an apple polisher; I hung around with them and patiently waited for my turn to be the boss. These fuckers didn't know that I had seen millions long before meeting them. Unbeknownst to Dan and the rest of the lot, I used my cut to throw some bets on the side. It wasn't much, usually between 30 and 50 thousand dollars; a sum small enough to avoid a shift in the odds which would give away my underhanded activity.

  This is how we grow: we start from zero, then we take our 30 thousand dollar cut from the first match and place it on the second one. Now, in addition to the 30 thousand cut from our second match, we'll have the winnings from the 30 thousand that we gambled. We take that money and place it on the following game and so on. All one needs to become his own boss are four matches played right. But I had to be cautious; I couldn't place 100 thousand dollars on a single match because it would have altered the odds and ruined it for Dan and the others. If they realized that information had been leaked and that their profits were threatened, there was a good chance that they would call the game off so I was limiting my betting and contenting myself with a healthy side-profit. Whereas some match-fixers will sell the information on the fixed matches to another party, I preferred to wager my own cash on the side, because when you tip somebody off they will go to another person and that person will go to another yet and so on. That has always been the problem with Mega. He can't help but tip off other punters.

  "Why don't you fucking go and make your own money", I kept telling him. "You start with 30 or 40 thousand and grow slowly".

  I had my mathematics right but I never executed the scheme correctly myself; I'm a gambler, just like Mega. If I have 90 thousand dollars, I will gamble on other matches as well; not just on the fixed ones. When I punt, I get carried away easily, then, when I'm losing, I have the tendency to completely lose control of what I'm doing. Had I been disciplined, by now I would be a multimillionaire with properties all over the world. I could have easily made anywhere from 20 to 30 million dollars.

  While still in Hanoi, I also set up a meeting with a group of Vietnamese match-fixers that I had met during the 2008 Merdeka Cup in Malaysia. They had a runner, a tall, skinny Vietnamese guy who went by the name of Trung. Trung would come to the stadium with a camera, a tripod and film the Merdeka Cup matches. I don't really know why he did that. Trung knew that we were fixing matches so he would say "hello", sit with us and shoot the breeze about match-fixing. Before he left Malaysia we exchanged numbers and, when I traveled to Hanoi, I called him and we scheduled a meeting with his boss at a local hotel. Trung introduced me to a guy called Nguyen and to Nguyen's uncle, their b
oss. Nguyen's group was already fixing matches in the local Vietnamese league and wanted to build a relationship with us, which they did. We agreed to meet again in Singapore at a later time to discuss the possibility of doing business together.

  About a week later, towards the end of January 2009, the Lebanese national team traveled to Thailand to play in the King's Cup. I arranged a short holiday in Bangkok for Fadi and flew him over to instruct the Lebanese players. Dan also flew in to oversee the business but the betting volumes for the Thai King's Cup were so tiny that it wasn't worthwhile to execute the fix. Since both Dan and Fadi were in Thailand, I arranged a meeting between the two with the understanding that we could all share the profit from our future business with Lebanon.

  On the following week, the Lebanese team was playing at home against Syria in another AFC Asian Cup qualifier. Dan and I traveled to Beirut where we met with the Lebanese players and asked them to throw the match.

  "This is delicate game", they objected. "Syria is a team that we cannot lose to; they killed our Prime Minister".

  Next, we tried to convince the Syrian players to lose.

  "No way", they also snubbed our offer, "this is a life and death game for us".

  There was no margin for fixing the match so I used the time in Beirut to follow up on my relationship with the Syrian national team player that I had met in Bahrain. We had exchanged some e-mails in the preceding days and he had renewed his invitation to visit him in Syria. We met and I introduced him to Dan before returning home.

  When in Singapore, Dan decided to approach Ah Kang, the Chinese man who ran the betting house that had sparked the feud between him and Harry. Dan got a Chinese-Singaporean friend of his called Ah Lam to call Ah Kang, who flew in from mainland China to meet him. The two met at the Marina Mandarin hotel in Singapore; I was present but sat at a different table observing them from a distance. Ah Kang was a skinny Chinese who only spoke Mandarin and Hokkien. He claimed that he could place huge wagers in very little time but also noted that he would accept Dan's bets only if the games were fixed.