Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (43 page)

The sucker probably
mistook me for an ordinary penniless joker from India. I decided to
flex some muscle. I plunged my hand in my side pocket and pulled out
two stacks of banknotes and threw them on the table under the man's
nose.

"These are 20
thousand dollars", I said to the croupier. "Can I have them
changed please".

The men around the
table swung their heads around in shock as my detractor slid sideways
to make room for me.

"You're welcome
at this table", he said in a low voice, "you can stay. No
problem".

November
14
^th
,
2009, the day of the final African World Cup qualifiers, was a very
busy day. Toumani, my contact in the CAF Referee's C
ommittee,
had designated one of my referees
from Zimbabwe to officiate Ivory Coast's last qualifying game against
Guinea. Barely a week prior to the Ivory Coast game, I had sent the
same ref to Bahrain for a friendly match between the home side and
Togo, which Bahrain had won 5-1. Toumani was very accommodating and
would place my referees in official fixtures for a meager ten
thousand US dollars.

While my referee
officiated the Ivory Coast match, I was in Nairobi for the game
between Nigeria and Kenya where I was joined by Rajendra Prasad and a
new acquaintance, Eric. A common friend had introduced me to Eric
while in Singapore and Eric had said that he wanted to see me in
action. He claimed that he wanted to become a match-fixer and share
business with me in the future. Eric and I met the Kenyan national
team players outside their training camp. By then I had already had
some run-ins with the Kenyan team and three of their players were on
my payroll. Two were going to be in the starting eleven in the match
against Nigeria, while the third was expected to sit on the bench.

"Boys", I
told them, "help Nigeria win. Try to get this done for me".

The three players
nodded. The handicap was one-ball so I told the Kenyan footballers
that we needed Nigeria to win by two clear goals.

The game kicked off
but the Nigerians were playing like a bunch of pussies. After 15
minutes, they were already down by one goal. Then there was a blatant
penalty against them which could have increased Kenya's lead but the
referee looked the other way and waved to play on. Nigeria eventually
won the match as expected, but not by a two goal difference; the
final result was 3-2.

Kenya had let
Nigeria win but, if Tunisia were to defeat Mozambique, they would
have overtaken the Nigerians in the run to the World Cup. As
promised, Football4U had sent a letter to the Mozambique FA president
offering the bonus sponsorship deal.

"If your team
holds Tunisia to a draw or defeats them", the letter read,
"you'll get 100 thousand dollars".

I think that the
Mozambique FA president is still holding on to that letter; if you go
to him, he'll show it to you as he did with Prince when they met.
Believe it or not, Mozambique fought its way to victory, defeating
Tunisia 1-0; my plan had worked and I was the unsung hero of
Nigeria's qualification to the final rounds of the 2010 FIFA World
Cup in South Africa.

Ferrying Nigeria and
Honduras to the World Cup was a personal achievement.

"Fuck", I
considered, "I got two teams to qualify for the World Cup but I
cannot tell anyone".

I
felt that I had accomplished something important and that I finally
sat on the very summit of match-fixing; a true Kelong King.
Even
though my line of business is illegal, I am a perfectionist when it
comes to my job. I always try to make sure, to the best of my
abilities, that everything is executed flawlessly. I had flown as
high as I could fly, unless I were to fix the World Cup itself, of
course. But I knew that neither Nigeria nor Honduras would have
followed me down that path. Football players love their sport too
much and, when they are competing at the highest levels, will play
100 percent and be prepared to die on the field; they'll choose the
sport over money. I mean, they love money, and they'll be torn
between the devil and the deep blue sea but, once they step onto the
pitch, they won't be thinking about anything else but football.

Three months after
Ah Kang and his runner had run off with my 720 thousand dollars the
opportunity to get even finally arose.

"You fuck with
me, I'll fuck with you", it's my way of doing things.

In December 2009 I
used Mega and a Chinese friend of his, a taxi driver called Ah Lim,
to get close to Ah Kang. Ah Lim called Ah Kang pretending to be a big
match-fixing boss from a Chinese-Singaporean syndicate.

"I got your
telephone number from someone", he said to Ah Kang, "I know
that you're a betting house. We have some matches coming up and we
want to know if we can do them with you".

Ah Kang's curiosity
was tickled and he wanted to know more; after some subtle convincing,
he finally bit the bait.

"We are fixing
some matches in German football", Ah Lim proposed, "and we
want to bet on those fixtures. We'll put the money on the table as a
guarantee and you'll do the betting for us".

The match that we
came up with was not actually a fixed one; I didn't care about its
outcome, I just wanted to fuck Ah Kang up and make him lose some
money.

"OK", Ah
Kang said. "You bring the deposit, place it on the table in
plain view and we'll do the betting for you".

I
booked two side-by-side rooms in Singapore's five-star Sheraton
hotel. In one room sat Mega and another friend who looks somewhat
Caucasian; he was supposed to be our boss and Mega his runner. I
figured that my friend's mixed-Eurasian complexion would raise less
suspicion. He and Mega were carrying
one
million Singapore dollars of mine in cash inside a suitcase. As they
entered the hotel room where the meeting was supposed to take place,
I sat waiting with five boys in the neighboring suite.
We
were ready to ambush Ah Kang's men and retrieve my money at my
command in the event that the match ended in a loss.

Mega and his 'boss'
were soon joined in the room by Ah Kang's runners with whom they
exchanged the appropriate ceremonial pleasantries. Despite the fact
that our 'boss' kept eating chocolates from the minibar, not exactly
a boss-like bearing, he came off as a credible figure and Ah Kang's
boys were not alarmed. Mega placed my one million dollars on the
table and spelled out his request to the Chinese betting house: 700
thousand dollars on Over 2.5. The match was a Bundesliga fixture:
Hamburger SV against some other German team the name of which I
cannot remember. When you play total goals there is no need to
recollect the names of the teams; only the final score matters. As
Mega and the others sat around the table with the cash, Ah Kang was
in mainland China using his betting facility to place the wagers on
our behalf. The deal with Ah Kang was that he'd pay us on the
following day in case of a win. The guarantor was going to be one of
his runners: if Ah Kang fucked us up, we'd go after him; had we lost,
Ah Kang's runner was supposed to collect my money and disappear with
it.

Ah
Kang completed our bets ten minutes into the match, which was a
little too lengthy for his standard; in the German league, under
normal circumstances, 700 thousand dollars could be placed within
five minutes of kick off.
We
sat waiting in our separate hotel rooms for the goals to be scored
but none came; in the 85
^th
minute the score was still nil-nil.
Then, in the 88
^th
minute, it was show-time: my five men
and I walked out onto the corridor and up to the door of the nearby
room where Mega and the others were. In front of the door stood the
Chinese runner who had stolen my 400 thousand dollars from Rajendra
Prasad. He smiled at me, thinking that I was one of Mega's boss's
men. I just brushed him aside and barged inside the room with my five
boys behind me. To my surprise, Choo, Dan's trusted runner and
friend, was sitting right across the table from Mega. I gazed at him
and Choo stared back. It was as if he had seen a ghost; he turned
death-pale.

"Wilson",
his eyes shifted from me to my five boys, "I have nothing to do
with this, OK? I have nothing to do with your 400 thousand. I don't
want any trouble".

Choo knew all about
the incident.

"I have nothing
to do with this", he kept repeating like a broken record. "Ah
Kang promised me three thousand dollars to serve as an interpreter.
That's the only reason why I'm here".

"Choo",
I reassured him, "I have no quarrel with you, don't worry".

I
put my hand in my pocket, fished out a stack of banknotes and counted
three thousand.

"Take
the three thousand dollars that Ah Kang promised you", I said as
I gave him the banknotes. "It's your salary; now call Ah Kang
and give me the telephone".

Had we won, we would
have collected our money and continued to play the same game with Ah
Kang until we lost. Unfortunately, it happened on the very first
match. I snatched the phone from Choo's hand as it began ringing
then, when Ah Kang picked up, I spoke to him in Hokkien.

"Do you
remember me?" I asked. "You stole 720 thousand dollars from
me, now I fuck you back for 700 thousand. The score is 1-1, if you're
good enough, you'll make it 2-1. Bye bye".

I hung up the
telephone, returned it to a trembling Choo, picked up the suitcase
with my money and left the building followed by my boys, Mega and his
pretend boss. In spite of the lost bet, we had lured Ah Kang into
betting and losing 700 thousand dollars of his own funds. I had
promised Mega ten percent of the profits in case of a win, a handsome
reward which he never cashed in. Instead, I granted him 20 thousand
dollars worth of credit on one of my on-line betting accounts, which
Mega lost within a matter of days as usual.

Around that same
time, I fixed the CECAFA Cup, Africa's oldest football tournament, in
Kenya. Once again, I did not need to travel to Nairobi; Danny was
there running the show for me. Zimbabwe was participating in the cup
and I had instructed Danny to let them play freely during their first
three matches, as there was to be no live betting on them. Then, when
Zimbabwe advanced to the quarter-finals against Rwanda, we stepped
in. Danny spoke to the Zimbabwean players and they were forthcoming,
giving us the 4-1 loss against the Rwandans that we wanted. The
Eritrean national team was also competing in the tournament and, at
one point, their entire delegation just took off and disappeared from
the hotel where they were lodged. I scolded Danny for not approaching
them earlier.

"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".