Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (13 page)

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.

"Did Danny run
away with my money?" he asked.

Fuck. Somehow Pal
had found out about the whole story, probably from some common
friends with big mouths.

"No, he
didn't", I said. "The Nigerians kept your money".

"OK",
stated Pal, "I don't want to know who ran off with my money, I
am not interested. You owe me that money".

And that's how I
became indebted to Pal.

A few days later, I
received a call from a referee called Ramasamy who knew me from the
bookies corner in Jalan Besar stadium. He knew that I was a punter
and that I was involved in match-fixing. Ramasamy was in dire need
for cash.

"Wilson",
he said, "I have a lot of parking tickets and I don't know how
to pay them. Can you lend me ten thousand dollars? I will pay you
back or I can do something else for you".

"I don't have
that kind of money with me", I said to him, "but let me
talk to Pal and see if he wants to help you out".

I called Pal.

"Hey boss",
I said, "there's a ref who wants to borrow money from you".

"Let me speak
to him", Pal replied.

I gave Pal's number
to Ramasamy and the two spoke; I had no clue
about
what transpired between them over the telephone but, a
few days later, Ramasamy called me to say that he was going to speak
with Pal in person. Ramasamy and I decided to meet at the Clementi
Café in downtown Singapore before his rendez-vous with the
boss. From there, we hitched a ride with a Chinese friend towards
Yishun, where Pal was waiting for us. I told my Chinese friend to
stop by the train station, where I climbed out of the car. Pal was
still pestering me for the 80 thousand dollars that Danny had stolen,
so I preferred not to see him. After the meeting with Pal, Ramasamy
and my Chinese friend came back to pick me up at the station.

"How much did
Pal give you?" I asked Ramasamy.

"Pal wasn't
there", Ramasamy replied. "There was another man. He fished
five hundred dollars from his pocket and gave them to me. I asked the
man: 'What the fuck? Only five hundred?' But he just nodded and
left".

A few hours later,
while I was at home in Woodlands, I received a call from Pal.

"Wilson, where
are you?" he asked.

"Home, boss".

"Wait for me
there", he commanded. "I'm coming to pick you up. We're
going to meet your referee at the Concorde Hotel on Orchard road".

Soon a car was
honking its horn in front of my home. I walked out, hopped in the car
and took a seat. Immediately, I recognized Tan William, the head-man
of Ang Soon Tong, Pal's trade group, sitting in the front seat next
to his driver. Pal was sitting in the back seat beside me to my left.
As soon as the car began moving, Pal turned to me.

"Hey Wilson",
he said with an unusually humble tone, "tell William that we
took Tunisia against Portugal in Atlanta. Tell him how on that game
we were eating ball".

"Mother-fucker!"
I thought. "Pal had lied even to the head-man of his own gang.
Dirty, arrogant mother-fucker".

I didn't want to
land him into trouble.

"Sure", I
said as I turned towards William and smiled, "those Tunisian
fuckers really fucked us up".

If the triad guys
had known the truth, they would have ripped Pal's testicles apart.

William's driver
parked in front of the Concorde Hotel and we sat inside the car for
almost half an hour waiting for Ramasamy to arrive. Finally he showed
up, apologized to Pal for the delay and claimed that he was coming
from a meeting that had run late. Ramasamy stood by the car's window
as Pal instructed him without leaving his seat.

"The next
match", said Pal, "Police FC vs Sembawang Rangers FC, I
want the Police team to win by two clear goals".

Ramasamy nodded,
then Pal gave me a shove and asked me to tell the ref not to fuck up.
I repeated Pal's instructions to him.

On the day of the
match between Police FC and Sembawang Rangers FC, our ref delivered
the perfect job. The Sembawang coach was furious with Ramasamy, who
disallowed a clean goal, allowing the Police team to win by two goals
as Pal had ordered. After the match, Pal arranged for the payment to
be delivered to Ramasamy's sister through my friend Mike.

Meanwhile, Ah Seng,
the Hai Lok San bookie who had lent money to Pal before the Olympics
only to receive a bogus tip in return, was enraged and was looking
for Pal left and right.

"I want to kill
the fucker", he was heard saying, "I want to stab the
mother-fucker and kill him".

Somehow, through the
good offices of William, Pal managed to get in touch with the
head-man of the Hai Lok San, Ah Seng's trade group. The four of them
sat down around a table and managed to appease Ah Seng; they
convinced him not to take revenge against Pal and his life was
spared.

Later that year I
traveled to Chennai, the capital of Tamil-Nadu, one of the
southernmost states in India; I wanted to see my land of origin.
India is a massive country and southern Indians are mostly Tamils. In
the 18
^th
century,
the British brought many Tamils to South Africa, the Fiji islands,
the Caribbean and Malaysia to work in their sugar plantations as
cheap labor and that's how my family ended up in Singapore. This was
my first true holiday. I checked
into
a 3-star hotel for three nights and then
came back. I had no specific place to visit in mind, so I just went
to the beach and observed the daily lives of the ordinary people
around me.
I
felt sorry for the many poor living in the streets, for kids running
around without decent clothes to wear and for the many beggars
sitting outside the temples; I was heartbroken. On a different note,
the food was excellent and there were plenty of side dishes; had I
lived in India, I could have turned into a vegetarian without any
difficulties. I enjoyed my time in India but could never settle
there; It is too polluted, hot and back-dated. Indians look down upon
fellow Indians and still live by the caste system; although it is
prohibited by the law, it is nonetheless very hard to take it out of
the people.

"Fuck the law",
they will say, "this caste will never marry into this other
caste".

Fortunately, castes
do not exist in Malaysia or Singapore; we go to school together, we
play football together, we eat together and marry each other freely.
We don't fucking care which caste one belongs to.

Zimbabwe vs Bosnia
and Herzegovina, February 24
^th
,
1997, the
Dunhill Cup in Malaysia, was the first
international match that I fixed. After my trip to India I was left
with only three thousand dollars in my pocket and, instead of
gambling them away, I decided to put that amount to good use. The
Dunhill Cup was a friendly international tournament with no bearing
for the teams involved and I decided to try my luck with the
Zimbabwean players. I knew that these black guys were dirt-poor and
could be corrupted so I decided to approach them. By then I was not
that close to Pal anymore, but if there was business to be done,
neither of us would hesitate to join hands, so before leaving for
Malaysia I called him up.

"Boss", I
asked. "What if I make an attempt with the Zimbabwean team?".

"I am in
control of that team", barked Pal. "You keep away from
them".

I didn't buy his
words; I could tell from his tone of voice that he was lying. Pal
had
power when he had money but without money, he was like a balloon
without air.

On the following day
I traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where I met a friend called
Thana. Thana was a former player for the Malaysian club Kedah FC and
had been the hottest young striker in their lineup during the
Malaysia Cup years. In 1993, when Thana was among the club's top
scorers, Pal had helped the Kedah state team win the cup against
Singapore. Unfortunately for Thana, his career had ended prematurely
when he was arrested by Malaysian authorities during the 1994
anti-corruption sweep and banned from the game by the Malaysian FA.
He was in his early 20's when we had first met in Pal's office in
1995 and had become good friends. Thana and I had learned about
Zimbabwe's whereabouts from the local papers and soon managed to get
in touch with one of their players. Thana didn't want to run any
risks and refused to attend my meeting with him. I met the player on
my own and told him that I was a football agent, took him out for
dinner and then put him on a shopping spree; it felt like a first
date. Then I made my offer.

"Would you be
happy to receive 100 thousand US dollars to lose a game?" I
asked.

"Extremely
happy", was his reply.

"The 100
thousand is not meant for you alone", I clarified, "but for
five or six of you who can be trusted to work for me. Do you think
that you can arrange for me to meet the others?"

"Sure I can",
he said.

On the following
day, the Zimbabwean player brought five of his teammates to my hotel
room. One of them was extremely cautious and kept asking questions.

"We don't know
whether you are a policeman or not", he argued.

"I'm not a
policeman", I answered. "Look at my passport, I am a
Singaporean who has come to Malaysia. Look at the places where I
travel. This is my profession: I fix matches, I approach people.
Either you want to do business or you don't".

That point settled,
they agreed to my proposal.