Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (52 page)

"I already have
two laptops", I told them, "I don't need another one. I can
give you 50 pounds to help you out though".

I fished 50 pounds
from my side pocket and gave them to the boys as a goodwill gesture.
They thanked me for the money and drove off, then, after some 50
meters, they stopped their car and waited for me to walk by them
again.

"What's the
best price that you can give us for this laptop?" one of them
said from the car's window.

"Look", I
answered, "I had 150 pounds in my pocket and I just gave you
guys 50. I need the remaining 100 pounds to get through the rest of
the day".

"Come on bud",
they pleaded, "we'll give you this computer for 130 pounds".

"Fuck it",
I thought to myself, "let me help these guys out".

I gave them another
80 pounds. They slipped the laptop inside a black bag and handed it
to me. Bag in hand, I headed towards a betting shop on Wembley High
Road. When I arrived I told a friend about my encounter and he
smiled.

"I bet that
there is no laptop in there", he said pointing to the bag.

"No way",
I told him, "I saw the boys place the laptop right in here with
my own eyes".

I unzipped the bag
and saw a small sack of onions inside.

"Mother-fuckers
tricked me into buying onions for 130 pounds", I exclaimed.

Those were the most
expensive onions that I ever bought in my entire life. My friend
explained that Irish boys prey on gullible people and that a friend
of his had fallen for the same trick with a mobile phone just a week
before.

"They'll switch
the bag on you in the blink of an eye", he explained.

I was taken aback by
the incident. You see, in Singapore I had never witnessed white guys
in the streets swindling people; it was something that I didn't know
existed.

While in London, I
spent most of my evenings at the computer working on my fixes and on
my betting. I watched some football - for gambling purposes only -
and the news on the BBC. I've lost interest in watching football for
entertainment. I'd rather wait for the end of the match and check the
results than go through an entire 90-minute game; sometimes I will
only watch the last ten minutes. I've followed too many football
games in my life and there comes a time when your adrenalin kick
comes to an end. Women often asked me how I could watch a football
match for 90 full minutes and I used to think that they were ignorant
about sports and could not appreciate the art of football. Now I
understand that they were right. If you are not into football, you
are bound to wonder why 22 idiots should run around a pitch chasing a
ball for an hour and a half. During my entire stay in London I never
even bothered to attend a single Premier League match at the stadium,
but, when I put my money on a match, then it's a different story
altogether; I'm glued to the fucking screen to see what the players
are doing. And when they miss, I'll scorn their grandmother, their
mother, their father and anybody else that comes to mind.

The worst strikers
in football are made in England; they'll cost a club 10 to 20 million
pounds and they can miss a goal from two or three yards. English
strikers score 40 goals during one season and less than five in the
following season. Darren Bent and Andy Carroll are two fine examples;
England will never win the World Cup while I'm alive, that much I
gather.

After the World Cup
in South Africa, I continued to work with Dan. He knew that I was on
the run, was OK with it and was now facing my same problem: after the
arrests of Dino and Admir in Croatia, he dared not travel to Europe
for fear of being apprehended. Despite our troubles with the law, we
were very busy and were moving a lot of money. We were running left
and right, organizing tournaments and international friendly matches
here and there. Around that time I thought of buying some property: I
needed 500 thousand dollars but only had 300 thousand. I asked Dan
for help and, incredibly enough, he accepted without flinching.

"My partners
are in prison right now and I'm holding on to their money", he
said. "I can lend 200 thousand to you".

Despite our
differences, Dan was proving to be a real friend.

The
appeal for my assault charges was due to come up in Singapore on July
13
^th
,
2010, and I, of course, wasn't going to attend. The court had
assigned a very good judge to my case, Justice VK Rajah, the best one
that I could hope to get: a very neutral man. Judge Rajah doesn't
take sides and will let everyone know who is the boss, so when you
stand before him, you better make sure your socks are pulled up. Yet
at that time, leaving Singapore seemed to be my only way out. London
had become my hub and I was busy moving to and fro. I was even
stopped at the UK border for a random drug check once. The officer
read my rights and asked me if I had swallowed or was carrying any
illicit substance.

"If you are
caught with drugs on you or in your luggage", he said, "you
will be immediately transferred to the custody suite".

"There is no
fucking suite in custody", I laughed.

The officer then
took me for an X-ray screening but nothing came up and I was allowed
to go. They had no idea that I was in a completely different line of
business.

In
the Spring of 2010, Mega called me to let me know that he would be
traveling to Rovaniemi, Finland, to fix some matches with the Zambian
players from Rovaniemi Palloseura (RoPS) football club, to whom we
had left money at the end of the previous season. RoPS had been
relegated and was now playing in the Ykkonen league, the Finnish
second division. Mega said that he would be traveling to Finland with
two other Indians:
a
very skinny Muslim guy called
K-Junior and a really fat Indian-Singaporean named Mahina. Mega was
in business with a new boss whose name I do not know. I spoke to him
over the telephone one or two weeks before his departure.

"So, Mega",
I said, "you are going to Finland to do these RoPS games. Do you
have a boss?"

"Yes, I have a
boss", he replied.

"Can your boss
play up to one million dollars?" I asked.

"No, my boss
cannot play up to one million dollars", he admitted.

"My boss can
play up to a million dollars", I concluded, "you think
about it and get back to me".

He never did.

"What a
fucker", I thought. "I put him on a business class flight,
brought him to Finland, paid for his expenses and handed 20 thousand
dollars to the boys out of my own pockets to ensure their allegiance,
then, when I make a business offer, he declines and chooses to do
business with another guy. Mother-fucker".

Mega told me that
his boss was going to pay him 30 thousand dollars per game; I would
have agreed to pay him 40 thousand. His refusal put a strain on our
relationship and I stopped calling him. I was pissed off but didn't
really make an issue out of it.

Mega and his
associates landed in Finland, hooked up with the Zambians and with
some Georgian players from RoPS and began fixing matches with them.
Their first fix ended 3-0 in favor of RoPS, as did their second.
Then, on the third 3-0, there was a fuck up. The boss decided not to
pay the RoPS players because he had asked for 4-0 and claimed that he
had not made any money from the match because of the missing goal.
Amateurs. The RoPS players and were very unhappy and I sensed that
the moment had come to reclaim my investment. I immediately sent
Anthony over to Finland to track down the Zambians and take over the
Finnish club for us.

"Anthony",
I explained, "look for and talk to any of the black players from
RoPS. See if they want to do business".

I booked an airplane
ticket for Anthony and off he went. He flew to Rovaniemi and randomly
approached one of the African boys.

"Are you from
Zambia?" he asked.

"Yes, I am",
the player answered.

Anthony called me to
ask for more details.

"I'm with one
of the Zambians", he said, "who should I ask for?"

"I met two of
the Zambian players last year", I told him. "They will know
that my name is Wilson. Tell them that we met at the Hotel Cumulus.
Ask them whether they remember me".

"Can you
explain more?" Anthony insisted.

"Tell them that
I gave them ten thousand dollars each", I said. "Fuck, just
put him on the phone".

Anthony handed his
telephone to the player.

"I am the guy
whom you gave the money to", the Zambian player confirmed.

It was Musonda, the
golden-haired Zambian RoPS player that I had met at the end of the
previous season.

"Do you
remember me?" I asked.

"Yes, I
remember".

"Good".

Anthony could not
discuss business directly with Musonda because he was with his wife,
so he recorded Musonda's telephone number and left.

In late July 2010,
after contacting Dan and obtaining his financial support for the
business in Finland, I hopped on a flight from London to Helsinki.
Before I reclaimed my connections with RoPS, however, I approached FC
Haka, a club that played in Veikkausliiga, the Finnish first
division.

Nowadays
football equals gambling plus live betting and betting companies
provide a good portion of the money needed to keep the whole circus
afloat. The Finnish first division is called Veikkausliiga because
Veikkaus, the national betting agency, sponsors the top league and
each club that competes in it. In Singapore, it is the State-run
gambling company, Singapore Pools, that funds the S-League and the
same is true in other countries. When FIFA says that live betting is
destroying football, they know full well that the main sponsors of
the beautiful game include many major betting companies
.

The reason I
approached Veikkausliiga's FC Haka is because I wanted to find a team
that we could sponsor in the same way that Bryan had sponsored the
Swiss club FC Chiasso a few years before. I have to admit that my
approach was neither carefully planned nor professional; it was a bit
amateurish. I spoke to Juha, the club's Managing Director.

"Look here",
I explained, "I want to sponsor your team with about half a
million euro. We will bring five or six players here to complete your
lineup: if they are successful, we will sell them to other clubs for
a profit".

Juha said that he
would submit my proposal to the club's management. He also informed
me that another Finnish club, Tampere United FC, was going through
serious financial difficulties. After leaving Juha, I went to Tampere
and made the same proposal to the Tampere United FC management.

While
waiting for a reply from FC Haka and Tampere United I took a flight
to Lapland, the north of Finland, at the edge of the Arctic circle. I
landed in Rovaniemi, where I checked in at the Cumulus hotel. I
rounded up the RoPS players in my room before their July 18
^th
match against FC Viikingit and asked
them to lose.

"No", they
replied, showing a good dose of confidence. "We can win this
match".

"OK", I
said. "Go and win then".

I decided to take my
chances and gave the players an advance payment of 25 thousand euro
to win the match. The RoPS players took the money but played a
horrible game and were thrashed by Viikingit 3-0. I lost about 200
thousand dollars on the match. That evening I met with Musonda and
recovered the advance payment that I had left with him.

The
boys that Zeddy had sent to Finland from his Zambian academy were a
bunch
of
hopeless
footballers; they were not class-1 horses. I was a better player than
they were when I was 20 years old. Some people are born with talent
but, if you are not, you must come to terms with the fact that your
technical ability will not appear overnight. There are many talent
scouts out there that organize youth tournaments around the world:
the Under-17 World Cup; the Under-20 World Cup and so on. If they
missed you during the Under-17, then you have to make it by the
Under-20, otherwise, it's too late. Players who compete at the
highest level are discovered even earlier than that: at 16 or 17
years of age. Somebody spotted Lionel Messi when he was barely 11;
that talent scout must have had a very sharp eye. But if you are
beyond 20 years of age and playing in the Finnish second division,
going to Bayern Munich or some other top-class club is something that
you can only dream of. You'll have to come to terms with the fact
that, throughout your career, you'll be paid at best one or two
thousand dollars per month. The highest you may get is perhaps three
thousand.