Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (15 page)

I knew that he and
Pal
had fixed matches together but my intention
as a friend when I introduced the two was to help Ramasamy. I was
charged with common intention for introducing a referee to a bookie;
that was my crime. It was like being charged for introducing an
underage girl to Berlusconi.

Finally, the
Balestier players also joined the choir. They had each taken money
for the three games that they had fixed with Mike and Ah Seng and had
immediately started spending it profusely. Their wives had begun
renovating their flats and were aware that their respective husbands
had taken bribe money so the CPIB decided to use them against me.

"We know that
Wilson Raj is involved", they said to the players. "If you
don't admit that Wilson gave you money, we are going to pursue
charges against your wives as well".

"OK", the
players were in a tight spot, "Wilson Raj gave us 180 thousand
dollars for these three matches".

Now the Singapore
authorities were looking for me not just for the common intention of
introducing a referee to a bookie, but also for paying football
players to throw their club's matches.

When Pal returned to
Singapore from Malaysia he was immediately picked up by the CPIB. He
was tried and convicted to prison time together with the rest of
those arrested. I decided to remain at large for a while and see if
things would cool down.

I had made over a
million Ringgit from the Dunhill Cup so I had enough money in my
pockets and no real reason to go back to Singapore to face the
charges against me. From Kuala Lumpur I traveled to the UK with
Thana, Yap and Rajah, my schoolmate who had stolen the football boots
when we were 18. Once again, I used a friend's passport to enter the
UK and spent three months watching top Premier League matches and
wagering on them. I was placing my bets through Yap and the fucker
was cheating me on the odds: if Man Utd was giving 9-5, he would
quote me 8-5. I stayed in the UK for a while and just gambled and
gambled until all my money was gone and I was left with no other
option but to return to Malaysia.

By then it was
mid-June 1997 and the FIFA World Youth Championship was taking place
in Malaysia, so I just sat back and watched the matches. I even tried
a halfhearted approach with some of the Ivory Coast players in their
Johor Bahru hotel. I followed them inside the lift but I did not go
through with my plan because I realized that they spoke French and I
didn't. There was a language barrier and security was pretty tight. I
was already in trouble in Singapore and I didn't want to risk getting
busted in Malaysia as well. Next, I tried approaching some of the
players from Ghana and they seemed agreeable at first but I was not
very comfortable executing the business with them because they were
not back-line players. I prefer back-line players: the two central
defenders, the last man stopper and the goalkeeper. If you can get
three back-line players on your payroll then you can execute a fix
because, when you want to lose, the attackers can't help you.

"What can I
do?" I thought, "I cannot survive in Malaysia without
money. One way or the other, I have to return home".

In 1998 I tried my
luck and returned to Singapore from Malaysia. I knew that the
police
were
hot on my trail so I tried to lie low
and avoid trouble. I lived at a friend's house and, over a year since
his betrayal, I made up with Danny and started hanging out with him
again.

"Let bygones be
bygones", I said to him.

One night Danny and
I were hanging out at
a pub in Bugis, a
neighborhood near Singapore's Little India, when suddenly two
Indian-looking guys came up to me. One of them rushed towards me and
grabbed my shirt very tightly near my neck. He didn't say, "you're
under arrest", or anything like that, he simply grabbed my shirt
and held tight. Fights and clashes were frequent at that particular
pub so I figured that they had mistaken me for somebody else.

"I think you
got the wrong guy", I said, as I tried to wrestle loose from his
grip. "Excuse me, I don't think I'm the one you're looking for".

"Handcuff him",
said the man while turning to the other Indian guy.

The moment I heard
the words "handcuff him", I knew that the two were
policemen. I punched the one holding my shirt straight in the face
and he fell over like a pack of cards. Not that I'm a trained boxer
or anything; I just acted on impulse. Then I tried to run, I'm a fast
runner and would have been nowhere to be found within seconds, but
the policeman hadn't let go of my shirt and was pulling me down along
with him. My mind worked quickly; I tore my shirt buttons open and
wriggled myself out of the policeman's grip, leaving him on the
ground with my torn shirt in his hand. Before I knew it, the second
policeman was onto me, trying to pull me down.

"Danny, give me
hand!" I shouted.

I swung around and
kicked the policeman as Danny, who had overcome the initial surprise,
came to my rescue by standing between us.

"Where is your
arrest warrant?" asked Danny, as I sped in the opposite
direction.

Danny had provided
me with some additional time to flee. As I ran off bare-chested, I
looked back to see him being brought down and handcuffed by the
officers. Thanks to my rediscovered friend I had managed to escape.
After going into hiding I sought news of Danny and found out that he
was charged with obstructing enforcement officials from performing
their duty. And that was not the end of it: the police had searched
him and found 50 porn DVDs on his person. Porn is banned and illegal
in Singapore. You can watch it on-line but can't own a DVD with an
x-rated movie on it; silly as it may sound, that's our law. In
Singapore you can be charged for
farting
in public.

"What the fuck
does a guy need 50 porn DVDs for?" I wondered when I heard the
news. "I can understand having a couple close at hand for
personal gratification, but to carry 50 of them on your person is
totally absurd".

Danny wasn't
convicted for preventing the cops from arresting me but for owning
the 50 porn DVDs. He was sentenced to five months in prison because
he could not come up with the money to pay the 25 thousand dollar
fine that they had slapped on him. Unfortunately, I could not help
him because I too was broke.

At that time I was
dating a girl that Danny
would
later get married to. She knew him well and, in
hindsight, I think that the two might have made some sort of deal
with the police to give away my whereabouts. One night, as the girl
and I drove away from a pub, I noticed three vehicles tailgating me
closely. Suddenly, the cars pulled up to the sides and tail of my
vehicle. We were at a traffic junction and the traffic lights were
red. I tried to move but there was a taxi right in front of me. Then
about ten guys hopped out of the three cars and walked up to mine; I
surrendered and they arrested me. Strangely enough, the girl was
allowed to leave
in
a cab instead of being brought down to the police
station for questioning together with me. She left without so much as
a look behind her. The policemen handcuffed me and escorted me to the
CPIB building and into a room where an officer in plain clothes came
up to me and threw a punch straight into my face.

"How dare you
hit one of my officers", he screamed.

"You want to
fight me?" I replied. "Uncuff me first".

Just then, another
officer intervened and pulled the first officer away from me. I was
escorted inside an interrogation room where I was kept in handcuffs
for the whole night even though I had nowhere to run. The following
morning, they read the charges against me.

"You've got
nine charges for corrupting football players", the officer
smiled, "and three for bribing the referee Ramasamy".

There were four
policemen looking after me at the police station; three men and a
woman. The stupid fuckers loosened up the handcuffs to let me use the
bathroom and wash my face before I was transferred to remand prison.
The cuffs felt very loose around my wrists; I slipped one of my hands
out of them quite easily and waited for the right opportunity to make
my move.

As I was being
accompanied towards the police vehicle that was to take me to remand
prison, I slipped the second handcuff from my wrist and took off
running. I made a desperate dash for the front gate but it was too
high to clear with a single jump so I tried climbing it. I wasn't
half way to the top of the gate
when
one of the officers caught hold of my leg; then another
guy grabbed my other leg and down I went. Had I cleared the gate, the
four fuckers would have lost their job for negligence.

I was taken to
Queenstown remand prison where I was locked up for a couple of weeks
before being transferred to court where I was formally charged. Bail
was set at 300 thousand Singapore dollars, an amount that was far out
of my reach at the time. I was then sent back to remand prison to
wait for the actual trial to begin. This time around I was
psychologically prepared for what would come next; I already knew the
prison's lifestyle, routine and how to kill time while inside.

I first went to
trial for allegedly paying the Balestier FC players to fix three
matches in the local league together with Mike. He and some of the
players had turned prosecution witnesses against me and had obtained
immunity from the court. Ah Seng, on the other hand, had already been
convicted for the same three charges that the prosecutors were
bringing against me.
I
still remember the judge, Ms. Jasvender Kaur; she was a specialist in
handling football-related offenses. She had been promoted to the
office of
the
District
Judge after being the prosecutor in Pal's case at the end of the
Malaysia Cup.

My
family hired a lawyer to represent me. The first thing he asked was
for me to be uncuffed during trial.

"Objection,
your
honor",
the prosecution immediately said. "The accused is a dangerous
individual who is being tried, among other things, for attempting to
escape custody".

"In
my courtroom", Judge Kaur replied, "an accused is presumed
innocent until proven guilty. Uncuff him".

During
the trial my friends from my social football club Brazilian Boys were
made to parade in front of me and testify against me. The star
witness was Manap, a very close friend of mine. He would have never
spoken against me without a good reason but, when he took the stand,
Manap said: "Wilson gave me 180 thousand dollars outside
Tampines Stadium on July 28
^th
,
1996".

Fucker.
Thank God that the date was wrong. On that day I was still in the
United States with Pal and Uncle. I couldn't bring the bosses to
testify in court but I could ask the judge to check. I took the
stand.

"Your
honor", I said, "I was in the United States of America on
that day. It is unlikely that I could have been in two places at
once. Unfortunately, I've lost my passport since but I'm sure that I
could not have given them the money on that date. The witness is
lying".

I
had already told the senior investigator about my trip to the US
after they had read the charges against me but my statements had not
been recorded by the CPIB and the officer had completely ignored me.
Judge Kaur, instead, was a fair and scrupulous judge.

"Check
when he entered and left the US", she told the prosecution.

In
the following hearing, Manap was called back to the stand.

"In
your account", said Judge Kaur, "you said that the accused
gave you the money on July 28
^th
,
1996. Are you very sure that he gave it to you on that day?"

"Yes",
Manap replied without hesitating, "I am very sure of the date".

"OK",
said the judge, "thank you very much, you may go".

The
court contacted the US embassy asking for the precise dates of my
entry into and exit from their territory. The embassy came back to
them confirming that I was in the United States on July 28
^th
,
thus proving the prosecution's witness unreliable. Judge Kaur had
given Manap a chance to rectify his account but he hadn't seized it.
If he had said, "I'm not sure", then I would have been in
huge trouble. The other witnesses that took the stand were just as
bad; they couldn't get their stories straight and the entire trial
ended up becoming a complete fuck up for the prosecution.