Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (14 page)

"We are ready
to do the job", they said. "How much will you pay us?"

"I'll pay you
100 thousand US dollars to lose the match against Bosnia. I'll give
you a 30 thousand dollar deposit that you can hold on to, the rest
will be delivered to you on the day following the match".

"OK, no
problem", they replied. "What score do you want?"

"I'll give out
the precise instructions on the day of the game but it should not be
any more than a 2-0 defeat".

"OK".

The five Zimbabweans
all agreed. I called Pal again; although he had lied to me about
controlling Zimbabwe, I knew that he would not pass a good business
opportunity.

"Listen",
I told Pal, "I have Zimbabwe and they can work. You want to work
with them or not?"

"OK", said
Pal. "What do they want?"

"30 thousand
dollar deposit, 70 thousand after the game".

"OK. Do it, no
problem", said Pal. "Get things done".

Pal sent one of his
runners, a guy called Simon, to Kuala Lumpur with the 30 thousand
dollars in cash. I took the money from Simon and handed it over to
the players. Pay careful attention to this: five guys; everything was
set; the odds were Bosnia giving one-and-a-half, meaning Bosnia to
win over Zimbabwe by two goals. Pal had not come to Malaysia in
person but had one of his Chinese investors in the stadium watching
the match while I was running the show. Pal called me before kick
off.

"Close the
first half on 0-0", he instructed, "then concede four goals
in the second half".

Four goals?
Honestly, I don't know why Pal asked for such a huge goal difference;
two goals would have been enough for us to win good money. Bosnia was
already the favorite; their players were huge compared to the
Zimbabwean boys.

The
game kicked off and Zimbabwe was set to lose
but
around the 20
^th
minute they netted a goal and took
the lead. I had misjudged the Zimbabweans; they were actually much
better than the Bosnian players. The first half closed 1-0 for
Zimbabwe and I was starting to grow nervous. Then, in the second
half, Bosnia scored twice within a ten-minute time span and went
ahead 2-1,
mainly
because my five boys in the Zimbabwean team were performing way below
their standard. I needed another goal from Bosnia to clear the
handicap but suddenly, at the 75
^th
minute
of game-play, the Zimbabwean player who was asking a lot of questions
about me being a policeman volleyed the ball from 40 meters out and,
to everyone's surprise, landed it straight into the Bosnian net. 2-2.
What followed was the strangest goal celebration that I've ever seen
in my entire life. The Zimbabwean player brought his hands to his
head as if to say: "Fuck. What have I done".

Then all five
players, my five guys, gathered like a rugby scrum and started
talking in circle right in the middle of the pitch.

"What the fuck
do we do now?" they thought.

First timers; so
fucking unprofessional. After the ref's whistle sealed the 2-2 final
scoreline, I received a call from Pal.

"What the fuck
did your people do?" he shouted.

No excuses can
pacify a losing punter; when things go wrong, people have a bag
filled with excuses but the bosses seldom have the patience to listen
to them.

"Do you know
how much we lost?" yelled Pal. "What the fuck!"

Fortunately, the
Chinese investor who was at the stadium came to my rescue, telling
Pal that the Zimbabwean player who had scored was behaving
abnormally; that he appeared genuinely desperate after the goal and
that, overall, the game seemed to be fixed. Pal called me again and
ordered me to recover the 30 thousand dollar deposit from the
Zimbabwean players. I met the players and took the money from them,
only to gamble it all away that same night at the casino. On the
following day, Pal called again to say that he had sent his runner
Simon to retrieve the cash from me; he told me that Simon would meet
me at one o'clock in the afternoon on the following day. At that
point, with no excuses left in my bag, I went missing.

After the fuck up
with Pal, I was left without a financier for the remaining Dunhill
Cup matches so my friend Thana asked if he could bring a bookie over
to see me for Zimbabwe's coming match against Vietnam.

"Bring him
over", I told Thana.

I was broke anyways.

Thana introduced me
to his friend Yap, alias David, a hair stylist from Alor Setar and
one of the biggest runners in Malaysia at the time, and to Yap's
Chinese friend, another runner from Alor Setar by the name of Boon.
Yap and Boon were business partners and bookmakers but in this
business a bookie can easily turn into a fixer.

"Do you have
Zimbabwe?" Yap and Boon inquired. "Can you arrange a
meeting with the players? For every game that your boss fixes we're
ready to cover your bets for up to 300 thousand Malaysian Ringgit per
match".

Yap and Boon had no
idea that there was no 'boss' behind me anymore. To 'cover' my wager
meant that I wouldn't have had to repay them in case of a loss. In
other words, the 300 thousand Ringgit were my cut for providing the
bookies with the information on a fixed match. It was a good offer
for someone who was penniless like me; in 1997, 300 thousand Ringgit
was roughly 120 thousand US dollars.

"So Yap",
I double checked, "you can place 300 thousand Ringgit on the
match against Vietnam?"

"No problem",
he confirmed.

The odds were
three-ball in favor of Zimbabwe. I briefly introduced the players to
Yap and Boon in their hotel room and then dictated my instructions to
the Zimbabwean boys.

"Make sure we
win the match by four goals or more", I said confidently.

I knew that they
were good enough to destroy Vietnam and offered them 50 thousand
Ringgit in case of success. As expected, Zimbabwe clobbered Vietnam
by a whopping 6-0.

During the match I
spotted Simon, Pal's runner, pacing nervously up and down in the
grandstands looking for me. Then I saw Pal. I think that he was out
on bail at the time and had probably left Singapore with his
brother's passport or something. Before I could split from the scene
he saw me and started screaming in my direction.

"Wilson",
he shrieked. "Where the fuck is my 30 thousand?"

He was furious and I
needed to find a quick and plausible explanation to appease him.

"Sorry Boss",
I said, "the players bought a bunch of electronic devices with
your money and had none left to pay us back".

"I want to see
them tomorrow", growled Pal. "Arrange a meeting with them".

That same night I
collected my win from Yap and paid the 50 thousand Ringgit to the
players. Zimbabwe had made it past the group stage and was set to
play the Dunhill Cup semi-final against China. I arranged a meeting
with the players, as Pal had requested, and he came to speak to them.

"What the fuck
happened against Bosnia?" he asked the Zimbabweans.

The boys hung their
heads. Pal was wearing a thick gold chain; he took it off and placed
it on the team captain's neck.

"Don't fuck me
up this time around", he admonished. "You will do as I say.
I want you to lose by two goals".

"All right
boss", they replied. "We will. No problem".

Everything was
ready, then Yap came looking for me once again, landing himself in a
trap that I had no intention of setting up for him.

"Does your boss
want to throw any bets on the next game?" he asked.

I didn't want to
sound desperate, so I took my time.

"Let me talk to
him about it and get back to you", I said.

I left, walked for
ten minutes or so around the block, then came back to him.

"My boss asks
how much you can place for him" I asked Yap.

"Half a million
Ringgit is no problem", he replied.

"That is too
little", I waved his offer away with my hand. "My boss will
require at least one million from you or else we're going to look for
another bookie".

"OK, OK",
Yap conceded, "no problem. I'll cover your million".

Pal was betting on
one side and I was betting on the other with Yap's money. I hit the
match with one million Ringgit, roughly 400 thousand US dollars. So
what will the odds be? China was giving one-ball, everybody was
pushing and the odds were supposed to rise
but
something was not right: the odds for China dropped from one-ball to
half-ball instead of moving up to one-and-a-half. This meant that the
Chinese were also doing business. Pal called me.

"Fuck!" he
exclaimed "What's going on? Everybody is eating here. Check if
China is doing business".

I sat in the stadium
before the start of the fixture with my fingers crossed. If I were to
lose, I was ready to jet and disappear. I would have flown to India;
I've seen many guys in the betting circle default their payments and
take off to Thailand or Cambodia; I was prepared to run the risk.

The match kicked off
and, after the first 20 minutes of game-play, I could tell that China
had no intention of scoring.
Our
Zimbabwean boys were looking in the other direction but the Chinese
were just blasting the ball in the stands. There was a massive
competition going on behind the scenes; a competition between two
bosses. Pal wanted Zimbabwe to lose and some other boss wanted the
same result of China. It was raining and our boys were slipping and
sliding every which way. Eventually China gave up and scored; they
hit a soft header and my boys just slipped and fell. Final score: 3-1
for China. I don't know who was fighting Pal on that day, but Chinese
teams have been under the control of match-fixing syndicates for a
long time.

I won my first
million Ringgit from the match, plus the 300 thousand Ringgit Yap and
Boon had paid for my information. Pal won his bet too but decided not
to pay any money to the players.

"This was a
payback game for the fuck up with Bosnia", he told them.

Pal did not have so
much as the shadow of a conscience. I did not agree with him and
decided to give the players some of my own money. I met them on the
day following the match and handed them 50 thousand Ringgit. I told
them that another 50 would be coming their way before they left
Malaysia. Unfortunately, Yap could not arrange for all of my money to
arrive on time and I was not able to settle my balance with them. The
poor boys called me non-stop from the airport as they were boarding
the airplane back to Zimbabwe, but I was in no position to help them
and they returned home with only half of the money that I had
promised them.

Singapore is a
society where money revolves from one hand to another at the speed of
light. Horse betting, football betting, lotto; money is always
changing hands. If you are broke, there are a number of people that
you can contact to ask for loans: friends, money lenders and illegal
loan sharks. If I were in Singapore today, I could stand before
somebody and take a 100 thousand dollar loan from them on the nail.
But if it's Malaysia we're talking about, nobody knows me and nobody
is going to trust me with 100 thousand dollars. That's why we cannot
function without being in Singapore; our place is where the money is
moving, always.

In early 1997, after
our success in Malaysia's Dunhill Cup, a series of arrest warrants
were issued in Singapore by the CPIB for match-fixing in a number of
domestic football matches. Pal, Ah Seng, the referee Ramasamy, Mike
and several of my friends from Balestier Khalsa FC were picked up
during the sweep. I was still in Malaysia when the shit went down and
I became a wanted man all over again.

Mike was the weakest
among those arrested and the first to start singing; he turned
prosecution witness and testified against Pal, Ramasamy and Ah Seng.
He also fingered me as one the masterminds behind the fixes in
exchange for a reduced three-month prison sentence. When he saw
himself cornered, Ramasamy also began to sing the same tune.

"Wilson
introduced me to Pal to fix matches", he told the CPIB.