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

  The first half of the game ended two-nil in favor of Malaysia but the betting volume granted by Ah Tong was not up to my standards; I wanted to throw more money on the match. As the second half was about to kick off, Rajendra Prasad called me and suggested that we place our bets with Ah Kang who, despite his recent fuck up, could probably provide us with bigger volumes than Ah Tong.

  "Why is Rajendra pushing me to Ah Kang?" I wondered.

  Rajendra Prasad knew that I didn't want to do business with Ah Kang, but insisted nonetheless.

  "Why don't you bet with Ah Kang?" he repeated. "What's the difference?"

  "I told you", I argued, "he cheated me with Bahrain vs Iran, why should I go back to him?"

  But Rajendra Prasad was so persistent that, in the end, I gave in to his prodding.

  "OK", I thought, "never mind the past".

  Then I asked on impulse: "Check with Ah Kang if he can bet 400 thousand for me and if he can give me a POW ticket".

  A POW ticket determines, before any betting actually takes place, the amount that one is going to win or lose at the end of a match. When you buy a POW ticket from a betting house like Ah Kang's, you agree that he will be calling the shots; he will decide the final result of the game and at which minute each of the goals has to be scored. Your only duty is to provide him with the scoreline that he desires. In this specific case, the POW ticket set my win at 320 thousand dollars and my loss at 400 thousand. Ah Kang spelled out his request through Rajendra Prasad.

  "The betting house wants three goals in the second half", Rajendra Prasad relayed to me, "the goals have to be scored between the 80th and the 90th minute".

  "Agreed", I said, "tell him that I'll give him the result. But can he confirm my POW?"

  "Yes", said Rajendra Prasad. "It's confirmed".

  Ah Kang was in China but had a runner in Singapore. The runner asked Rajendra Prasad to meet him inside a second-hand mobile phone shop in the People's Park Complex in Singapore's Chinatown. Despite my being just a phone call away, Rajendra Prasad went to the shop carrying my 400 thousand in cash, left the money with Ah Kang's runner as a deposit for my bet, and took off. He didn't seek my consent first and he didn't inform me, otherwise, I would have surely objected and told him to stay with the money until the end of the match.

  I knew that I wasn't going to lose because I had nearly all of Lesotho's players on my payroll. The team was under my full control and any result could have been achieved upon request. As expected, the match ended 5-0 in favor of Malaysia. The three second-half goals were all scored in the last ten minutes of the match as requested by Ah Kang. I was already savoring my win when I received a phone call from Rajendra Prasad.

  "Hey", he was in total panic, "the guy took off with the deposit. He's gone missing".

  "Fuck", I was shocked. "What the fuck do you mean he's gone missing? You mean you gave him the money?"

  "Yes. And the runner has disappeared", said Rajendra Prasad. "I went back to the shop and they told me that he is not there anymore. I'm calling him and he's not picking up the phone".

  The shop wasn't Ah Kang's shop, nor was it the runner's; the latter had just chosen a seemingly random place to meet Rajendra Prasad for the match. The actual owner of the shop claimed that the runner just popped up in there from time to time.

  "What the fuck are you trying to do man?" I roared. "Why didn't you fucking ask me if you should hand the deposit over?"

  "I didn't think that the guy would cheat us", said Rajendra Prasad with a trembling voice.

  He was scrambling to find a way out but there was none. Ah Kang had fucked me up; he had taken my 400 thousand dollar deposit, plus the 320 thousand dollars that I had won. In total, 720 thousand dollars. I wondered how a mainland Chinese guy could dare pull such a trick in Singapore. Then I remembered something that Dan had told me a while back. After the three disastrous matches in Syria, he had placed 15 thousand dollars on a horse race on behalf of a friend of mine. Then he had called me.

  "Wilson", Dan had said, "I placed your friend's wager for 15 thousand. If he wins I'm going to 'hiong' him and take his deposit".

  'Hiong' meant that he was going to swindle my friend. I couldn't help but draw a connection between what Dan had said and what Ah Kang had done.

  On the following day, one of my gangster friends, who had heard the news about Ah Kang's trick through the grapevine, called to offer his services.

  "Shall I go speak to Rajendra Prasad and settle this for you?" he asked.

  The guy had stabbed Rajendra Prasad in the past over a dispute and had spent four years in prison for doing so. The mere sight of him would have sent Rajendra Prasad running in fear but, as I said, I don't believe in violence so I declined the offer.

  "There is no need to do that", I told my friend. "Thanks for your consideration brother, let me handle this. Let me see him and talk to him, I'll try to recover the money".

  At that point in time I had plenty of money and didn't consider the loss seriously. It was Ah Kang that I was really after but, in the back of my mind, I could not help but suspect that Rajendra Prasad had conspired with him to cheat me. Despite my intuition about his bad faith, I gave Rajendra Prasad the benefit of the doubt. I decided to forget about Ah Kang for the time being and concentrate on other matters.

  On the day following the Lesotho match I read that the Zimbabwean club Monomotapa United, the same club side that had posed as the Zimbabwe national team during their recent trip to Malaysia, were set to play a CAF Champions League fixture in Tunisia against Etoile du Sahel, a local club. I found out very late; nobody had informed me about the fixture, otherwise, I would have dispatched somebody there to do business. I called Rosemary from London.

  "Hello Rosemary", I said, "I gather that Monomotapa is playing in Tunisia. Can you get me in touch with somebody from the team?"

  "Sure I can", she promptly replied. "I'll get you the coach".

  Rosemary spoke to the Monomotapa coach, then gave me his telephone number in Tunisia. I immediately rang him up and proposed the fix to him. I asked that his team lose the match by 4-0, conceding two goals in each half.

  "No problem", agreed the coach. "We will get the job done".

  I promised the coach that his players would receive 70 thousand US dollars to share among them. Shortly after the match kicked off, Monomotapa conceded an early goal which pushed the odds on total goals up to 3.5; I put my money on Over 3.5. Then the second half began and they conceded a second goal. I continued with my betting: I was confident that they would deliver. I wasn't using a betting house; it was just myself and a few friends clicking away on several websites on which we had opened a number of accounts. We kept wagering until the end of the match, hoping for the third and fourth goals, which never came. I lost nearly 500 thousand Singapore dollars on this single fucking game. It was the first time that a Zimbabwean team had fucked me up. My first thought was that Rosemary and the coach had conspired against me; I suspected that they hadn't passed my instructions on to the players, otherwise, what difference would there have been between 2-0 and 4-0? The players would have been more than happy to deliver two more goals and fly home with some money in their pockets. My guess is that the duo simply tried to keep the entire 70 thousand dollars to themselves; they probably assumed that the result would have come naturally. Had they promised each of the players even two thousand measly dollars, the result would have been guaranteed. The mother-fuckers had killed me with their greed.

  After the negative experience with Monomotapa, I turned my attention to Latin America. Armando, the Nicaraguan national team player who was now working for me, had slowly built up my network there and I reckoned that it was time to cash in on my investment. I used him to obtain fresh contacts in El Salvador. Thanks to Armando, in late September 2009, I fixed a stage group CONCACAF Champions League match in Panama between a local club called Deportivo Arabe Unido and an El Salvador side, AD Isidro Metapan. I sent Anthony to Panama to oversee things. Mindful of Alassane's
betrayal, I had made things very clear to Anthony.

  "Now you're working for me", I admonished. "And when you work for me, you cannot expect to be the boss. Don't leak out information to others, do as you're told and I'll pay you well".

  I speculated that there would be live betting for the match but also predicted that volumes would be low, so I contacted Ah Tong to place my wagers.

  "Hey", Ah Tong said, "I heard about the trick that Ah Kang played on you. If you want, I can kidnap Ah Kang and retrieve your capital. I can't do anything about your win, but the 400 thousand dollars can be reclaimed".

  I told him to look into the option but he backed down after a couple of days.

  "Ah Kang is moving around with four or five guys", he remarked, "there is no way that we can ambush and kidnap him. But if you want I can still place your bets".

  I took Ah Tong up on his offer and asked him to take care of my wagers for the Deportivo Arabe Unido vs AD Isidro Metapan match in Panama. Then, about half an hour before kick off, one of my guys called me.

  "Hey Wilson, what the fuck. There is no live betting on the match!"

  I turned my computer on to check for myself and saw that there was no live button next to the fixture on the timetable. Fuck, Anthony had already paid the players 50 thousand dollars. Without hesitating, I picked up the telephone and called Ah Tong again.

  "No live betting", I told him. "Place all my bets before the game starts, we have 20 minutes".

  The Panamanians from Arabe Unido put on an impressive show; they clobbered Isidro Metapan 6-0. The only setback, apart from the absence of live betting, was that we needed the El Salvador side to concede two first-half goals and they didn't. We had attacked the odds to overcome the loss from the lack of live betting, but had come one first-half-goal short of the jackpot.

  "Wilson", asked Anthony, "should I go and fetch the deposit back from the players?"

  "It doesn't matter", I answered. "Let the players keep it; they still did a good job".

  Letting the footballers have the money was a sign of good faith and an investment in my future relationship with the El Salvadorean team. Two hours after the end of the match, however, I received a call from a distressed Armando.

  "Boss", he sounded confused, "why did you take the money back from the players?"

  Wait a minute.

  "I didn't take the money back from them" I replied.

  "Your man did", Armando continued. "He went back to the hotel and collected 25 thousand dollars from the players. 'It's because you were one goal short in the first half', he told them".

  "That is not what I had instructed Anthony to do", I said. "Let me check with him, then I'll get back to you".

  At the time, Danny was in Central America on other business. He was working with a local contact in Panama, a travel agent called Javier, whom Danny had short-listed to join our group. Javier spoke fluent English and could issue airline tickets in a snap. I decided to call Danny and tell him to ask Javier to track Anthony down.

  "Hey Danny", I said. "There is a fuck up in Panama. This mother-fucker Anthony took the money from the players without informing me. Get Javier to go to Anthony's hotel room and check if he's still around".

  Javier located Anthony, went to his hotel and put him on the phone with me.

  "I told you to leave the money with the players", I scolded Anthony, "now you go back to the El Salvadorean boys together with Javier and return it to them. Right now".

  I had to rein Anthony in; the fucker had already fed me a cock and bull tale about a money changer who had shorted him five thousand when changing my fifty thousand euro into dollars, claiming that he had forgotten to count the money then and there. I was well aware of Anthony's gambling habit and, at this point, his loyalty was in doubt.

  "This mother-fucker must have gone to the casino and lost five thousand", I thought, "then he came up with this story".

  I've played all of these tricks myself when I was younger; I was the grand master of bullshit stories. If somebody gave me 100 thousand dollars and I was short on cash, I would take 10 thousand and try my luck. If things went wrong, then I would take another ten, hoping to win back the first ten. And if I lost it all, I would come up with a plausible explanation to cover up my mess. Now that I was the one pulling the strings, I knew exactly what Anthony was up to. At times those who worked for me surprised me: they disrespected my level of intelligence and tried to mislead me with completely outrageous justifications.

  By October 2009 I reckoned that I needed a new front company to formalize my deals and contracts with the various FAs around the world. World Wide Events and Sports International, the company founded by my former friend Chandar in 2001 which I had used until then, was not a viable vehicle for my business anymore. The company had been struck off the Singapore register in 2005 and I couldn't run the risk of someone uncovering my scam by means of a simple check in the company register. I therefore founded a new firm: Football4U. The name was similar to the one used by Alassane for his football academy, only mine used the digit "4" and the letter "U". I registered the company in Singapore in my name and became its sole director.

  In late September 2009, Football4U bought Botswana's airline tickets to Hohhot, northern China, for their commemorative international friendly match against the Chinese national team. I couldn't travel to China myself so Rajendra Prasad traveled there on my behalf. He landed in Hohhot and approached Botswana's coach.

  "We're here to do business", were the first words out of the dumb fucker's mouth.

  "Business?" the coach replied wide-eyed. "What are you talking about?"

  "You mean your superiors didn't tell you anything?" Rajendra Prasad was a real idiot.

  "No", said the coach, "they didn't say anything. I was not informed".

  Rajendra Prasad had unknowingly fucked me up once again. We were forced to back off and China won the match 4-1. Since the coach was not informed and we had no contact with any of the players, we decided to take the loss. I later found out that Botswana's coach was a sworn enemy of Peter, my contact in their FA. When he returned to Botswana, the coach exposed Peter for doing business with us and Football4U appeared in the local papers as the sponsor that had bought the team's tickets to China. Peter was first suspended, then sacked by the Botswana FA president, David Fani. The story was all over the internet. Rajendra Prasad mother-fucker.

  I believe that Peter deserved to be sacked. He should have known that, after spending so much money on his team's tickets, I was bound to send one of my men over to China to do business. I had expressly told him to pick a coach who could dance to our tune. It was a simple task. If he couldn't find one then he should have informed me. I don't run a charity organization, buying airline tickets just for kicks. If you want a free ride then you better call Sepp Blatter, not Wilson Raj.

  On October 11th, 2009, Danny was ready to do business with the Sudanese team, which was supposed to play away to Mali. Danny's trip to Bamako, Mali, was also a chance to get in touch with the person responsible for the allocation of referees within CAF. His name was Toumani, he was a member of the CAF Referees Committee and of FIFA's Executive Committee. Danny met Toumani and handed him ten thousand dollars to make sure that my referees could officiate some 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifiers and other important fixtures. We had struck a deal and Danny returned to Singapore.

  Three days later, Honduras was scheduled to play their final World Cup qualifying match away against El Salvador. They needed to win in order to qualify for the final rounds of the South African World Cup without having to compete in the play-offs. Through Armando we had hooked up with the El Salvadorean national team and Bee Hoon was on the ground to make things happen for me. We wanted El Salvador to lose by two goals but, before I could place any wagers on the match, Bee Hoon had already splashed 200 thousand dollars of his own on it, thus ruining the odds for me. Unluckily for him, Honduras played a very cautious match. They rarely attacked and settled for a single goal, which they netted
in the second half. Unbeknownst to them, I had contributed to Honduras' qualification to the 2010 World Cup.

  The only reason I went to Finland in October 2009 was because Mega invited me there. He wasn't working for me when he came up with the proposal: "There is potential business to be done in Finland. What do you think?"

  I never really enjoyed doing business in Europe because there were already too many fish in that pond. Ante and Milan, Admir, Dino and many others were already fixing European matches and I didn't want to dirty my hands there, nor end up caught in the crossfire. Eastern Europeans are corrupt to the core and extremely dangerous so you better not fuck around in their territory. Albania, for one, is home to one of the biggest football mafias; they've been gambling on Asian websites since 2007 or 2008. Belarus is another country where there is plenty of fixing in the lower divisions, sometimes matches will end 6-0, 7-0; they are all corrupt. Latvia, Estonia, they are all doing business. If only they could get a hold of the kind of betting houses that we have in Asia, their leagues would become like the Malaysian one: the most corrupt in the world. Just like everyone else, Eastern European players are willing to do anything to make a living; the average salary of a footballer there is usually between one and two thousand euro per month.

  Mega and I used to search the internet for teams with the highest number of black players in their lineup and Mega had found a Finnish club, Rovaniemen Palloseura (RoPS), that had eight Zambians in its formation. Since they were all from the same nation, it meant that approaching one would be like approaching them all; it made things a lot easier. Mega set up an account on a social network under the pseudonym of Simon Mega Diamond, then sent friendship requests to some of the Zambian RoPS players and began chatting with them.

  "OK", I said, "we'll go to Finland and see if something can actually be done with these Zambians".

  In mid-October 2009, on the eve of RoPS' last match of the season, Mega and I traveled from Singapore to Helsinki, then on to Rovaniemi, a minuscule town on the edge of the arctic circle that is the self-proclaimed home of Santa Claus. RoPS had a tradition for signing Zambian players thanks to their striker Zeddy, who had topped the club's goal-scoring charts for over a decade. Zeddy had set up a RoPS academy back home and fetched Zambian players for transfer to the Finnish club. He had just turned 40 and the coming match was to be his last appearance as player-coach for RoPS.