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

  Still, Ganesh is the number one god among Hindus. We really believe in him and the children totally love him. If you circle 108 times around him, Ganesh can clear all obstacles; eight rounds will suffice if you're running out of time. When I was in Singapore I would sometimes walk to the temple to worship Ganesh; I have faith in him and always keep Ganesh in my heart. Hinduism is quite complicated but if you read the Mahabharata you'll find that the basic principle is always the same: good will eventually prevail over evil. It is the basis of every religion. All of them try to teach one the right path but sometimes their message is misunderstood. I never could comprehend those Sunday Christians that go to church once a week and confess their sins.

  "Oh my Lord", they say, "I'm sorry, please forgive me for I have sinned".

  Then, on Monday, the sinning begins all over again. It sounds like a bad joke; these guys are a bunch of hypocrites; I think that even their god will think of them as the biggest and dirtiest bastards.

  "You are not supposed to ogle at another man's woman", the Bible says. "If your mind and your eyes ogle, then you are supposed to gouge them out of your head".

  It would be a nightmare for a Hindu. We are the ones that created the Kamasutra and sometimes the representations of our goddesses are very sexy. The human mind is corrupt and nothing can change a person's mindset. You cannot prevent thoughts from arising; before you know it, they're already there. The most you can do is to erase them as quickly as possible. Nor can you prevent your eyes from looking at a woman, even if you're a very religious person. You look at the tits, fuck, then you go.

  I had served my eight months in prison when, by the end of September 1995, I was out into society again. By then Ganesh was sated and had stopped drinking milk.

  While I was locked up, Pal's involvement in the Malaysia Cup had come under the spotlight of local authorities; he was re-arrested in Singapore and deported back to Malaysia. He was then made to tour 14 out of the 16 Malaysian states, one week here and two weeks there, from one trial to the next, to face the match-fixing charges being brought against him. While catching up on the recent developments outside of prison, I overheard from the grapevine that Pal had also been betrayed by Bryan.

  "For one million Singapore dollars", Bryan had told Pal, "I can solve all of your problems with the Malaysia Cup. I have somebody very high up there. I know a high-ranking Minister who can settle this matter".

  A desperate Pal had given Bryan the money, one million, to hush-hush the entire incident, but Bryan had immediately gone missing. He had probably taken off gambling in some casino and had forgotten all about his old boss. Despite the substantial loss, Pal had still managed to pay off a lot of people. He had sold a local property and had used the money to bribe officials left and right. While in court, he had bragged about making millions from his fixed matches. Pal was the kingpin of the Malaysia Cup; for two years in a row he had decided who would be the champion and, within a relatively short time-span, he had made up to 40 million Singapore dollars from match-fixing alone. Pal was a guy who liked to blow his own trumpet but there was really no need to brag. Nobody was going to know how much he was betting or how much he had earned if he had kept his trap shut.

  "I can do this, I can do that", he boasted.

  Finally Pal was convicted, but only in one of the Malaysian states, Penang, to a single day in prison. In Malaysia the law can be bent and, if you have money, it can do wonders for you.

  As for myself, I went back to the same old routine. I gambled at Jalan Besar stadium and played football in Ang Mo Kio with my seven-aside team Brazilian Boys. After a few weeks of carefree liberty I was approached by a friend called Mike, who has since passed away; Mike asked me to introduce him to some of the players from my team. He knew that some of my Brazilian Boys also played in a local team called Balestier Khalsa FC and wanted to ask them whether they would be willing to fix some matches with him. I told Mike that I had no intention of going back to prison and suggested that he come to our friendly matches and speak to the players himself if he wanted to.

  "Don't get me involved", I reasoned with him, "I cannot sit another three or four years in prison. I just can't".

  "Just introduce me", he insisted. "I have a powerful boss".

  "All right", I agreed.

  I introduced the players to Mike during a friendly match and they began talking business. Mike's boss was a bookie called Ah Seng who belonged to the Hai Lok San trade group. After being introduced to my friends from Balestier FC, Ah Seng and Mike went on to fix three Balestier matches with them.

  My sojourn in prison had left me penniless so, when Pal returned from Malaysia, I decided to visit him and ask him for some money. Usually the procedure was that the boss would give anywhere from five to ten thousand dollars to any of his boys that were fresh out of prison. Instead, Pal kept me waiting for three days, then only gave me one thousand dollars.

  "Fuck!" I complained. "You're only giving me one thousand? That's it?"

  I did my calculations and I knew that Pal was broke. We are gamblers, you know; in '91, '92 and '93, Pal was a multimillionaire; in '95, fuck, he was a pauper and was borrowing money from his friends. Pal was brilliant when it came to making money but a hopeless fucker in managing it. The trial, the arrests and the seizures by Singapore's authorities had landed him back at square one. Pal was left with a single property, a shop-house or something, but it could not be sold so I gave him the idea of taking out a loan against it. I suggested that he try to borrow some money from Ah Seng, Mike's boss, whom Pal knew well because they had spent time together in prison under Section 55. I prepared the paperwork for him and Ah Seng lent Pal one million Singapore dollars. The contract that I drafted gave Ah Seng the possibility to sell Pal's property if he were to default his payments. Pal was the same old dirty bastard: he was a member of the Ang Soon Tong triad but had no problem borrowing money from a member of a rival gang, the Hai Lok San.

  With a million dollars in our pockets we flew business class to the USA to fix the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Pal was sharing his business with Uncle and with an Indonesian-Chinese friend of his called Ronnie. Ronnie and Uncle did not know each other nor did Pal ever bother to introduce the two but they were nonetheless dividing the expenses by three and betting together. Since I had helped him borrow money from Ah Seng, Pal asked me to come along with him to the United States; I was to play a very marginal role there; I was just an accessory.

  I landed in New York and met Pal at the Holiday Inn Hotel, where the Tunisian national team's delegation was staying. The minute I arrived on the scene, I tried to get close to some of the Tunisian players. I was already on talking terms with a couple of them when Pal came over to me.

  "Stay away", he whispered. "Uncle has already accomplished the job".

  Uncle had the ability to convince people very quickly. I had already heard about this quality of his from some players who had worked for him in the past. My role was to approach and speak to the footballers but Uncle had jumped the gun; he had arrived a day earlier than us and had managed to build a relationship with the Tunisian team. He had gotten the defense back-line into the network and had started doing business with them. By the time Pal and I arrived, he had already accomplished the job and was nowhere to be found.

  Our first match was Portugal vs Tunisia in Washington D.C. The odds were one-ball in favor of Portugal so Tunisia had to lose by two goals. At that point Pal decided to double-cross Ah Seng, the man that was financing his fixes. I don't know why he chose to do so but I was aware that Pal had this dirty mother-fucking habit; he would call you and say, "today, you go and take this team", then he would bet on the other team. This was a very, very dirty habit that he had.

  He called Ah Seng and suggested: "Tunisia, we're supposed to collect".

  It meant that they were supposed to take Tunisia. Pal did this every fucking time, perhaps to obtain better odds for his bets. He was unaware that I was placing my own bets on the side with Ah Seng, whom I called on
that very same day.

  "Take Portugal and give one-ball for me", I told Ah Seng, "50 thousand".

  "Listen", Ah Seng was puzzled, "are you very sure that you want to do this? Pal said he eat ball. Take Tunisia, he said".

  "You want to follow Pal?" I asked Ah Seng. "Go ahead and do that, but for me, you take Portugal and give one-ball".

  Pal wasn't in the habit of attending a match that he had fixed so I personally went to watch Tunisia's first match and relayed the live commentary for him from the stadium. Portugal scored first and was leading one-nil so we needed Tunisia to concede just one more goal. In the 67th minute there was a shot at the Tunisian goal from some distance away and the goalkeeper dove in the opposite direction. End result, 2-0. I called Pal from the stadium.

  "Pal", I said, "you must give the players an additional ten thousand dollars for their level of commitment because these mother-fuckers did a perfect job. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't be collecting a cent".

  After the Tunisia vs Portugal match, Pal asked me to deliver 100 thousand US dollars to Uncle who was staying in another city, about 100 km away from Washington D.C. I picked up the money and traveled to Uncle's motel, your typical US motel with a large parking lot and a two-story building. It was the first and only time that I saw Uncle in person. He was a few years older than Pal, perhaps in his mid-50's, of regular build, with tanned skin, his hair combed sideways and wore glasses. He was quite well-dressed and appeared to be well mannered. He shared his room with a lady that I did not know. Uncle had been the first of us all; a true pioneer of the business. At one time or the other, we all eventually got caught by the authorities; Uncle never did. I left the money with him and drove back to our hotel.

  When I walked into the hall, I could hear Pal shouting from his room. Back in Singapore, Pal had been fucking two girls who worked in his office at the same time; one was named Sita, the other I cannot remember. He had sent the second girl to get an abortion while he and Sita had flown off to the Atalanta Olympics. The girl who had aborted hadn't seen Sita in the office for a couple of days so she had asked around and learned that Sita was with Pal in the United States. Blinded by jealousy, she had called Pal's wife, who had remained at home in Singapore.

  "Your husband fucked me and sent me to get an abortion", she cried to Pal's wife. "And now he's fucking another girl in the US. Right now!"

  I walked into my room, which was at the other end of the corridor, and closed the door, but could still hear Pal shouting into the telephone in Tamil.

  "You're a fucking whore", he hollered, "you're a fucking whore, you're a fucking whore".

  I reckoned that Pal must have been speaking with the girl that had alerted his wife. He just kept yelling the same thing over and over.

  "You're a fucking whore".

  After about ten minutes I walked out of my room, down the aisle and into Pal's room.

  "Pal", I said, "you are too loud".

  "You can hear me?" he asked.

  "Of course I can hear you. Everybody in this entire fucking hotel can hear you".

  "OK. Just wait there for a second", he hung up the telephone and called his runner, James, who was also in the hotel with us.

  "James, listen", Pal explained, "now you call my wife and you tell her that Sita is not here in the US with us".

  "But boss", argued James, "Sita is here".

  "James", sighed Pal, "you simply tell my wife that Sita is not here. It's just you, me and Wilson. Just the three of us".

  "But boss", James insisted, "Sita is right here".

  I turned to Pal, "Where the fuck did you get this moron from?"

  On the following day we moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where Tunisia was playing against the United States. The US team was not that strong and initially Tunisia was struggling to concede the two goals that we needed. I think that Uncle had co-opted additional players from the Tunisian lineup by then because, through an admirable team effort, they eventually managed to lose by two goals. I don't know why but we were not involved in Tunisia's third and last match against Argentina.

  Next, we moved from Washington to Miami, Florida, where Pal planned to fix Brazil vs Nigeria. He sent me to the Nigerian Olympic village where I managed to speak to three players. My offer was pretty straight forward.

  "300 thousand dollars for you, if you lose against Brazil".

  Before I could elaborate any further, a security officer came up to me and asked to see my ID. I didn't have one on me and was therefore asked to leave the premises immediately or be arrested. I left without arguing and reported back to Pal, who refused to give up on Nigeria. He took it upon himself to approach some senior officials from the Nigerian delegation who claimed that they could fix the match. Pal left 100 thousand US dollars in cash with them as a deposit. There was no need to worry about the money, he thought, because the Nigerians were participating in an official tournament and could not run away with it; they were traveling with their delegation and had one or two more matches left to play in the competition. Pal wanted Brazil to win by a two-goal margin but they only won 2-1 and we lost half of our bet. After the match, since the result had not fully materialized, Pal sent me to retrieve the 100 thousand dollars from the Nigerians. I called the Nigerian delegation members that Pal had left the money with and was told that they had already spent 20 thousand dollars, leaving only 80 thousand to recover. I was supposed to pick up the money and bring it back to Pal but decided instead that I would keep it for myself. I knew that Pal wanted to use my services and that he would attempt not to pay me after the job; my profit came solely from the bets that I managed to place behind his back. I retrieved the 80 thousand dollars from the Nigerians and hid them in a safe spot, then I made up a plausible explanation for Pal.

  "The Nigerian team is leaving today for Birmingham, Alabama", I told him, "where they're going to play the quarter-final against Mexico. We'll just have to wait until we get there to fetch your deposit".

  Since Pal and I were moving together, I needed someone else to recover the money that I had hidden in Miami. I made plans for my friend Danny to pick up the stack; I bought him a ticket from Singapore to the US and told him where I had hidden the cash.

  I'd known Danny for a lifetime. He and I were best friends ever since we were teenagers. When we were 19, we attended the same Tamil course at the language center. Back then, we both liked to listen to hip-hop music and Danny decided to become a rapper. He once played a recording of a rap song that he had written.

  "Not bad", I thought. "It's OK for a local guy".

  Danny admired the hip-hop culture and became a black wannabe. He loved to hang out with a group of black friends from the US who played live music in clubs like the Top-10 and began to move and speak as if he were a black guy himself.

  "You eat Indian food", I teased him, "then you walk around like a black mother-fucker? Why don't you rap in Tamil? There is nobody in the market rapping in Tamil. Go fucking rap in Tamil".

  What I taunted in the 80's later came true: Tamil rappers from Malaysia were making the headlines two decades later but it was too late for Danny. He had pursued his musical career and had joined a local band. I remember hearing one of their songs on a local radio once as I was driving around in my car. Danny sang a couple of lines in the middle of the song and that was it. A couple of lines was the most he could achieve so I told him to drop the hip-hop gimmicks and come along with me to the US for some match-fixing; there was no future for Singaporeans in the music business.

  Danny landed in Miami a day before our departure for Birmingham and immediately called me.

  "The money is not where you said it would be", he remarked in a distressed tone. "I've searched all over the place but it's not there".

  Danny liked to sound clever but was a simpleton when it came down to the most basic of tasks. Thirty minutes later, he called me again.

  "I've found it", he said triumphantly.

  We met briefly on the following morning, right before I left town
. Danny showed me the money and I instructed him on his next move.

  "Hang on to it until my return", I explained.

  Later that day, Pal and I boarded a flight to Birmingham, Alabama, where Mexico and Nigeria were set to play the tournament's quarter-finals. Since the Nigerians had proven unreliable, we decided to target the Mexicans and approach their goalkeeper, Jorge Campos.

  "We would like to speak to you", I told him in the hotel's lobby. "We have a proposal that you may find interesting".

  The Mexican goalkeeper agreed to follow me to our room where we sat down; just Campos, Pal, Pal's friend Ronnie and myself. We asked him if he wanted to do business: 300 thousand dollars to throw the match against Nigeria.

  "Sorry, I'm not interested", Campos replied. "I'm not into this kind of stuff, you know".

  As soon as Campos left our room, five Mexican security officials barged through the door and told us to leave the hotel immediately or be arrested.

  "We know what you are up to", they threatened. "You better leave now or we're going to call the police".

  Pal, Ronnie, James and I packed our things and left as soon as we could; fortunately for me, there was no time to look up the Nigerians to reclaim Pal's deposit which I had taken and passed on to Danny. Our run at the Atlanta Olympics was over. All in all, thanks to Uncle, we had done quite well.

  I flew back to Miami and tried to reach Danny on his mobile phone but the number was not working anymore. Danny had never seen 80 thousand dollars in his entire life so the fucker had decided to double-cross me. He took off with Pal's money and returned to Singapore where he gambled it all away, or so he later claimed. I had considered traveling to Brazil and Argentina for a short holiday with that money but Danny had thwarted my plan. After returning to Singapore I initially tried to locate him but I didn't want to risk landing in prison again because of a friend who valued our longtime relationship at a mere 80 thousand dollars, so I let it go and simply decided to forget about him.

  As soon as I was in Singapore, Pal called me up.