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

  "It would have been the best team to do business with", I told him. "I could have given those poor boys enough money to hide until they found refuge somewhere else".

  Later that December, the Congolese club Tout Puissant Mazembe was flying out to Dubai for the FIFA Club World Cup. They had won the CAF Champions League on the previous month and had qualified for the competition. I sent an e-mail to Felix, the Malawian football agent who was a consultant for the club.

  "I see that TPM is going to play in the Club World Cup", I wrote. "Is there anything that we can try?"

  "For 60 thousand dollars per game", he assured, "they will throw their matches".

  I then contacted Shaka, the Zimbabwean FIFA-accredited agent that we had met in Bahrain, and he updated me on TPM's schedule.

  "They are coming to Zimbabwe for some centralized training prior to the Club World Cup", he explained. "I can try to speak to a few of their players".

  The cup was to be played in Dubai so I sent Danny there to implement negotiations with the club. I flew Shaka to Dubai as well and he arranged a meeting between Danny and TPM's goalkeeper. They sat down together in a hotel room and Danny began relaying my orders to him but, as soon as he suggested that they had to lose the match, the goalkeeper's expression changed into one of bewilderment. Realizing that something was not right, Danny immediately shifted the discussion to another topic and left the hotel as quickly and quietly as possible. He boarded an airplane and flew back to Singapore at once.

  "Fuck", he reported, "the goalkeeper didn't know anything. When I told him that he had to lose, he made a crazy face and I was forced to back off".

  Too bad, I had plenty of other matches available at that stage. In 2009, money was just pouring in. I was fixing four matches in a single day; two here, two there; I was one of the busiest people around and barely had any time left for other activities. Through investments on airline tickets and all the other expenses, I gave Singapore's economy a substantial shove. This business is all about flying people left and right: in the year 2009 alone, I spent close to 1.5 million dollars on airline tickets for myself, my runners and my teams. It's a lot of money for someone running his business from the back of a photocopy shop.

  After Ah Kang and I had fucked each other up, I had a hard time finding another reliable betting house that offered decent betting volumes. Had I found one, I could have made ten million dollars in that year alone, instead, I was gambling on my own most of the time. I had opened a series of accounts on a number of gambling websites and I placed my own bets with my finger glued to the left-click button. Had I used a betting house, for every 200 thousand dollars that I made on my own, I could have earned 600 thousand. Even though my total revenue was affected, I still made good money and gambled heavily on other games that I had not fixed. I thought of starting my own betting house at one point but reckoned that I would have had to look for numerous complacent agents from several gambling companies. You need a network of people that can be trusted to run a betting house and I don't know that many agents with such 'high' levels of integrity; it's a different profession to all effects. And sometimes there are bosses or big-shots that are concealed behind these betting houses. They have a reputation, they hand out their website to a manager and take a percentage at the end of each month: 20 percent of all profits without being involved in the dirty part of the business.

  The court hearing for the incident with the CISCO officer at the Changi airport was due on December 29th, 2009. Despite my legal woes, my business could not be neglected, and I needed revenue to feed my gambling habit. I was sending other people out in my stead and juggling everything at once: calling my contacts, sending out runners, fixing matches and trying to manage my court case. I paid very little attention to my first hearing because I trusted my lawyer. Rajendra Prasad had introduced him to me; he was supposed to be the professional and was being paid as such. I will remember the hopeless mother-fucker until the day that I go to my grave.

  "Let him do his job", I thought.

  A few days before the hearing, I decided to take a short break and travel to the Netherlands to meet a player who was competing in the Eredivisie, the Dutch top league. My aim was to ask him to assist me in contacting European FAs willing to go to Africa to play international friendlies. My African contacts could get their teams to travel abroad when invited, but it was impossible to have European teams visit them at home unless properly arranged.

  While in Amsterdam, I managed to lose three million dollars on football matches in a single night. I began with Celtic FC vs Hearts FC, then moved on to some Italian and Spanish league matches until my credit had run out. On the following day and with a heavy heart, I was set to travel to the UK for a brief holiday. In the airport there were signs posted all over the place that read: "Declare your money if you are carrying more than 20 thousand euro". I was absorbed in thought and did not bother to declare anything but, when it was my turn to hand over the boarding pass, an officer pulled me aside for a random check.

  "How much money are you carrying, Sir?" he inquired.

  I knew that I couldn't lie, if I did, they could have taken all of my cash from me for trying to mislead them.

  "Fifty thousand euro", I replied calmly.

  The officer was taken aback.

  "Can I see it?" he asked.

  "Of course", I said and unzipped my handbag, handing the money to him nonchalantly.

  "I am afraid you will have to miss this flight", he remarked and escorted me to a nearby office. I was given a series of papers to sign and slapped with a three thousand euro fine for failing to declare my valuables.

  "Fuck", I said to myself, "I just lost three million and now these fuckers want another three thousand from me".

  "Can I appeal?" I asked.

  "Of course you can. You can appeal at the Dutch Embassy in Singapore. In fact, if you don't appeal you may be banned from entering our country for two years", he added.

  "See you in two years then", I thought as I boarded my flight to the UK.

  While in London, I was feeling really down and didn't have the clarity of mind to think straight. I felt a sudden severe concern for my hearing coming up in Singapore so I decided to send an SMS to my lawyer and suggested a different approach.

  "I want to plead guilty and settle this matter asap", I wrote in the text message.

  Upon returning to Singapore all negative thoughts were swept clean from my mind as I had very little spare time on my hands. Zimbabwe was flying to Asia for their 2009 international friendly tour. They were set to play against Thailand in Bangkok on the same day of my hearing; Danny was going to be with the team to make sure that they danced to our tune. The day before the hearing I met with my lawyer.

  "How long do you think my sentence will be?" I inquired.

  "If you plead guilty, you'll get a short sentence", he said. "I cannot say how short, but it will not amount to much".

  "Fuck", I thought, "three, four months behind bars? Sounds OK. I'll be out before the World Cup. Go to prison, play some basketball and come out fit, then get back to work. Or I could take the conviction, appeal, jump bail, go to the World Cup and surrender at my own pace".

  On the day of the hearing I was eyeing the presiding judge attentively. He had a reputation among criminals in the lower courts for being a real mother-fucker and allegedly hated repeat offenders: the worst possible judge for someone like myself. I consulted my lawyer again.

  "What is your relationship with this judge?" I asked him.

  "Pretty good", he boasted with a degree of confidence.

  Judges sometimes have more sympathy for an accused if they know his lawyer.

  "A little sympathy won't hurt", I calculated, "this is such a simple matter. Why would somebody want to slap me with a heavy sentence for it?"

  The judge read the charges against me then gave a wrap-up of the events: "The accused tore and threw the summons away claiming that the police could not do anything to him. He then used criminal f
orce to enter his vehicle and accelerated his car, hitting the CISCO security officer on the knee twice".

  The reconstruction of the incident was absolute rubbish. A child trying to get his brother reprimanded and slapped on the ass by his parents could have been more impartial.

  "I am a man and I don't lie about such trivial things", I objected. "I was holding a coke and a burger with both of my hands and could neither tear nor throw the summons. To corroborate what I'm saying, your honor, there is a CCTV recording of the entire incident".

  "Destroying the summons is of no consequence", rebuffed the judge. "Let's hear the plea".

  I pleaded guilty to the charges against me. The sentence was set to be read on January 27th, 2010, and my bail was set at 20 thousand Singapore dollars.

  As I stepped out from the courthouse I dialed Danny's number; Thailand vs Zimbabwe was to kick off within minutes. Everyone was taking Thailand and the odds were unfavorable; I couldn't afford to have the Zimbabweans lose by an ample margin or we wouldn't have made any money from the match.

  "Make sure Zimbabwe goes for a draw or at least that they don't lose by more than one goal", I recommended to Danny. "One goal is OK, two are not. Get the coach to park a bus at the back in front of the goal".

  The first half of the match ended one-nil for Thailand so we didn't want any goals scored in the second half but, with ten minutes to go, bam-bam, Zimbabwe conceded two goals within a three-minute time span. Danny was enraged with the players; he called me and we both felt that someone else, maybe another fixer, had bypassed us and made a different agreement with the Zimbabweans. The first name that came to our mind was Nguyen, the Vietnamese fixer that I had met in Hanoi. We were operating in his region and Danny had spotted him in Zimbabwe's hotel prior to the match. Nguyen had come to see us in Singapore three times already, but he was a very stingy guy, a real scrooge. His group could not reach the kind of betting volume that we could obtain on our own and we hadn't taken them seriously. On top of that, the Vietnamese were very hard to deal with; they would ask for more goals than were usually needed to overcome the betting companies' handicap and demanded for a precise timing in the scoring. It's very hard to work with people who require that goals be scored solely between the 40th and 45th minute of a match. The three minutes between Thailand's second and third goal were food for thought.

  On the following day, I was on the move again. The court had agreed that I could temporarily leave the country so I traveled to Malaysia, where the local national team was set to play against Syria in an international friendly match that I had organized. I had selected and instructed a Kenyan referee to officiate the fixture; he awarded three penalties and, by the 70th minute of the match, I left the stadium to collect my winnings. I didn't even need to watch the rest of the game. Why wait for the match to end when you've already won? Fuck that, three penalties, three goals, end of the story. Malaysia won the game by 4-1. My move from players to referees was beginning to pay off.

  On New Year's eve, Zimbabwe was scheduled to play another match against a local Malaysian club, Selangor FA. There was no betting on this particular game and there were no conditions attached, so Zimbabwe stepped on to the field and easily won by three goals to nil.

  That same evening Dan organized a New Year's dinner with his European associates and their respective families. They all flew to Singapore and were lodged at the Shangri-La Hotel. I stopped over just to say hello. Admir and Dino were there with another member of the syndicate, Kosta, from Bulgaria. Kosta fit well into the picture with Admir and the rest of Dan's partners; he too liked to play the big boss. He was a high flier; he dressed well, drank wine and tried to always behave like a millionaire. He kept five or six different bottles of wine open on his table and took just a tiny sip from each; one here, another one there. He had been arrested in Greece and extradited to Germany in late 2008 for cigarette smuggling, a modest offense, and had received a suspended sentence. Now he was back in business and had joined Dan's syndicate some time before.

  Kosta had a different, unique way of approaching teams: whereas I approached players, coaches and referees, he would go straight to the president of a club or of an FA. Kosta also had powerful connections in Turkey and Greece, and would ask the clubs' presidents to do the dirty work for him. From Thessaloniki, with the help of a number of club owners, he was fucking with the Greek league big time. Through him, I think that Dan and the others must have made big money in Greece and in Turkey as well. During the 2008-2009 season, Kosta had owned a football club in Bulgaria. The club played in the A-Group, the Bulgarian top league, but after Kosta came out of prison he was broke, as was Dan at the time, so they decided to bring the club down. They did it gradually, losing one match at a time and betting 100 thousand dollars per game. The goals were coming according to the required timing and, by the end of the season, Kosta's club was relegated. He sold it and had enough money to join Dan's syndicate and get things moving again.

  Dan hadn't invited me to his New Year's celebration dinner with Admir, Dino and Kosta. After saying hello to them at their hotel, I went home; I was not a shareholder of the syndicate and could not mingle freely with Dan's associates.

  Two days later, Zimbabwe was set to play against Syria in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This time around the Zimbabweans were creating problems. One of the officers who was accompanying the team called me to voice his complaints.

  "Hey Wilson", he informed me, "the boys don't want to take the field. They want to see some money first".

  "Fuck you guys!" I was sick of their continuous requests. "You fucked up the whole thing against Thailand and now you don't want to play without getting paid beforehand? You play your match first, then I will pay you".

  "No", he insisted, "we want to see the money first".

  "OK", I told him, "I will give you guys a 30 thousand dollar advance. You go out there and lose by four goals. And I don't want another fuck up".

  I took my car, drove up to Kuala Lumpur and gave the Zimbabweans the 30 thousand dollars; then I sat on their bench during the match. After Syria scored their fourth goal, I walked out of the stadium, as my presence wasn't required anymore. Zimbabwe lost 6-0, they were literally walking on the field. I arranged for another 20 thousand dollars to be delivered to the team at the airport before they flew back home.

  While I was busy in Malaysia, Rajendra Prasad had suddenly turned entrepreneurial. He teamed up with another runner of mine called Manimaran and decided that they would compete against me in Syria. They couldn't figure out how I had managed to squeeze a healthy weekly profit from the Syrian league; they had no idea of what I had gone through in order to be successful there.

  Sometime earlier I had sent Manimaran to Jordan to settle the payment for a Syrian goalkeeper. During his stay in Jordan, Manimaran had managed to approach a black player from Tishreen SC, a Syrian club from the town of Latakia. Manimaran had made some progress with the footballer and had arranged to meet him for business in Syria. The player claimed that he could convince his fellow teammates so, without informing me, Manimaran and Rajendra Prasad flew to Syria on their own to meet the other players.

  "Would you like to do business with us?" Rajendra Prasad and Manimaran asked. "Don't worry, we are reliable. We know this guy Samir and have players in hand from Al Wahda, whom you'll be playing against in your next match. Why don't we organize something for that game? You'll get your three points, guaranteed".

  Rajendra Prasad and Manimaran were using the name of Al Wahda, a team which they knew was in business with me, and the one of my fixer Samir because he was very popular among local footballers, especially those from Tishreen. It hadn't occurred to me that they could try to take over my business in Syria until I received a call from Samir himself.

  "Wilson", he seemed angered, "did you send somebody to the Tishreen football club without telling me? Are you doing business behind my back?"

  "Fuck, of course not", I replied. "I have no idea what you're talking about. You know that I
don't do that kind of shit".

  Samir knew that during the previous season I had briefly done business with the president of Tishreen. At that point the club was dangerously close to relegation and had a home match coming up against al-Nawair, another local club from the city of Hama, also on the take with me. Samir informed the president of Tishreen that I had enough influence over the al-Nawair players to dictate a result and the president asked to meet with me. I was in Syria at the time so I agreed.

  "Can you help me?" he inquired.

  "What is it that you want from me?" I asked.

  "Can you help us get the three points against al-Nawair when they come here to play against us?"

  "No problem", I said, "you'll have your three points. I can do that for you. But in the next season, when you play al-Nawair, if you are not fighting relegation, can you return the favor? If you are struggling to stay up in the league I will not disturb you, but if you are safe…"

  "Sure", he smiled. "If we are still in the top league, I'll gladly return the favor".

  I kept my promise and on May 8th, 2009, Tishreen thrashed al-Nawair 5-1 at home and got the three points. Ah Kang and I wagered on the match and made some money; we were still in business together at the time. I didn't ask any money of the Tishreen president for the fix and paid off the al-Nawair players from my own pocket.

  Then, during the following season, Tishreen went to play away to al-Nawair in November 2009. They were safe from relegation and honored their promise. Both teams worked to give me the four goals that I wanted and the game ended 2-2. Before the match kicked off, I had even given Dan a call.

  "Hey Dan", I had said, "we've got a free game coming up. We don't need to pay the cost of the players; it's a payback match".

  I had tipped him off and had pitched in some money for myself.