Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (56 page)

Dan decided to send
Alassane to repair the damage done by Yasser. Once again, Dan was
concerned that I might try to fix Alassane up while in Central
America.

"Wilson",
he warned, "don't do anything funny with Alassane".

"Fuck", I
exclaimed, "he's got family, two kids. I'm not going to fix him
up. I just don't want to talk to the fucker, that's all".

Alassane
landed in Costa Rica, spoke to the FA's president and attempted to
place our referee in a Costa Rica vs El Salvador international
friendly match that was to be played in the remote town of San
Carlos.
Costa
Rica is quite the place to stage an international friendly match. I
don't know why, but if the teams have a FIFA ranking above 100 and
the match is aired on television, then you can be 100 percent sure
that there will be live betting for it. B
y
then, however, the Costa Rica FA president had grown suspicious of my
company Exclusive Sports.

"These
mother-fuckers are up to something", he probably thought.

Alassane told the
president that Exclusive Sports would be covering all the expenses to
fly El Salvador to Costa Rica. The deal was too favorable to pass and
the president signed our contract; he seemed to have changed his
mind. Alassane, however, didn't have the credentials to put his
signature on the deal so we used a FIFA-licensed agent to sign for us
in exchange for a small fee. Alassane finally walked away with the
signed contract and was convinced that he had duped the Costa Ricans.
He picked a rundown stadium in San Carlos for the match but, at the
last moment, the Costa Ricans proved to be smarter than he was. Once
the El Salvadorean team had flown in at our expense, the Costa Rica
FA appointed a Panamanian ref of their choice to officiate the game.
In the end, we paid the airfare and accommodation for El Salvador but
weren't able to dictate anything to the Costa Rica FA. They fucked us
over and we didn't make any money from the match. What was the score
again? 2-1 for Costa Rica, I believe.

By then, the Bahrain
vs Togo match featuring the bogus Togolese team had fueled a row of
polemics about my operations. The Bahrain FA had exposed my name to
the Singaporean media and the papers all claimed that Wilson Raj had
organized the fixture, assembled a bunch of impostors and got them to
wear a Togo jersey in what looked more like a masquerade than a
football match. When I returned to London from Latin America, I
decided to call 'The New Paper' in Singapore, one of the loudest
voices against me, to assert my side of the story. I wanted to
respond to the allegations and attempt to instill doubts over the
media's reconstruction of the events. I didn't want everyone to know
that I was staying in the UK so I told Ravin Raj, who was still in
Central America, to use an El Salvadorean SIM and make the telephone
call on my behalf.

"You tell them
that you are Wilson Raj Perumal", I instructed Ravin Raj. "You
are in El Salvador and you didn't fix the Togo match".

Ravin Raj called and
spoke to a woman from 'The New Paper'.

"I am Wilson
Raj Perumal", he said, "I organize matches, international
friendlies, I don't fix them".

But the cat was out
of the bag; in Bahrain, Singapore and Zimbabwe alike, where the local
FA was probing and had produced a report with my name in it that was
picked up by the local Zimbabwean papers. I decided to send a
follow-up e-mail to some of the journalists who were writing about
me.

"How do you
conduct your investigations?" read the message. "You're
only hearing one party. Yes, the players are saying this and that but
you should first hear the other party before drawing a conclusion.
Why don't you guys stop this investigation and spend the money you're
using on it to beef up your economy or on education. That way at
least your people can benefit from it".

Too bad, if Bahrain
and Zimbabwe had kept the matter in the closet, the whole thing would
have just faded away in a matter of days. They should have covered up
the whole incident like the Thailand FA had done. My African referees
had been all over the King's Cup but not one article about them had
appeared on the internet; they had suppressed everything. That's how
it should have been. I mean, you don't expose your own people's
corruption to the entire world; you should try to put a lid over a
potential scandal. After all, the reputation of your own FA is also
at stake.

Being in the
spotlight was uncomfortable but didn't prevent me from getting on
with my business. By the end of October 2010 we were busy fixing the
Torneo Hexagonal Sub-20 in Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela. We had flown
Nicaragua, Ecuador, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago and Cameroon there to
participate in the competition. The Venezuela FA was quite happy with
the package but, by then, following the incident in Costa Rica,
rumors had begun to spread about Exclusive Sports. When we tried to
get Yasser to travel to Venezuela with the Nicaraguan delegation, the
Nicaraguans declined and contacted their Venezuelan counterpart.

"This guy is
not part of our delegation", they pointed out.

The Venezuelan
tournament didn't go well at all; it was a total loss. Our referees
were warm and ready but there was no betting on the matches, making
us incur a loss of about 400 thousand dollars.

Around that time I
received a call from Murugan.

"Hey Wilson",
he said, "I just spoke to Abu Bakar from Sierra Leone, he told
me that Anthony called him because he is organizing a tournament in
Bolivia in mid-November and needs referees for it. Abu Bakar asked me
if I could lend him ten thousand dollars to throw on the matches".

"Fuck" I
thought. "Anthony told me that the Bolivian deal fell through.
What the fuck is going on?"

I was supposed to be
a shareholder in Dan's syndicate but I was not being informed on the
matches that they did and now I reckoned that Anthony too was turning
his back on me. I discussed the matter with Murugan.

"Dan can turn
friends into foes", warned Murugan. "He is a very bad,
dangerous fellow. He can turn you into enemies and still be friends
with both of you; he is very capable of that".

Dan's questions
about Anthony's trip to Bolivia were beginning to make sense. My
doubts were confirmed when Mega called to inform me that Anthony had
indeed sealed a deal with the Bolivian FA, but through his own
company, Footy Media International. Anthony had called Mega to
retrieve Dan's telephone number and had let the information slip;
together with Dan, he had managed to organize a youth tournament in
Bolivia scheduled for November: the Copa Aerosur Under-20. The two
had recruited a Burkina Faso referee through the offices of Ibrahim
and a Sierra Leone referee through the mediation of Abu Bakar, just
as Murugan had suggested.

You see, this is a
dirty business and people will undercut you as soon as they have the
chance to but, to say the truth, I did not expect Anthony to stab me
in the back. I now realized that introducing him to Dan during the
World Cup in South Africa had been a huge blunder. Anthony had
traveled throughout Latin America at my expense; he had learned my
trade and eaten my bread then had brought my business directly to
Dan. What a mother-fucker. A few days later I spoke to Sivarajan who
told me that Dan had sought to justify his actions with him.

"Anthony
brought the business to me", Dan told Sivarajan, "I had the
right to take it".

The mother-fucker
knew full well that I had sent Anthony to Bolivia and that I had
taught him all the tricks of the trade. Now he was pretending that
Anthony had brought the business to him on a silver platter just for
his taking. Dan had shown that he had no business ethics; I was his
partner and you don't fuck your partner. If you do, then obviously
your associate is going to fuck you back. The bottom line was that
Dan was a crook and so was I; and when two crooks clash, either one
can have the upper hand. We needed just to sit and wait to see who
would have the last laugh.

By the end of
October 2010, I was back in Finland to hail the first 100 thousand
euro for Tampere United that were arriving from Singapore. I was
bitter about the way things were progressing with Dan and Anthony, so
I only gave Tampere 50 thousand euro and had no remorse in keeping
the other 50 thousand for myself. All in all, the Tampere sponsorship
deal was supposed to be one million but I had quoted Dan 1.5 million.
500 thousand would be going into my own pockets.

"This is a
fucking chicken from which you can take the golden egg, slowly",
I told Dan. "They want 1.5 million, give it to them".

You may wonder why I
always went back to Dan, even after he fucked me up and betrayed me
over and over. I guess it was because he was the easiest guy to do
business with and could always find the money to finance my fixes;
all I needed to do was call him.

"Dan, I need
300 thousand for this tournament".

The money would be
ready on the following day. Dan knew the business inside out. If I
were in Singapore, it would have been easy to find someone else: I
would have sat at a table with a financier, drawn a blueprint and
showed him what needed to be done, how much it would cost and how
much we would profit from the venture; no problem. But I was staying
overseas and had no choice but to go back to Dan; to somebody who
knew the nature of the business. Dan knew exactly how much money
could be wagered on a single match and was willing to buy my story
and invest 1.5 million on Tampere United because he knew that he
could win that amount back within a month's time. But Dan was also
short-sighted when it came to making money. He needed a way to
launder his profits and I provided him with one.

"Why don't you
move in as a director of Exclusive Sports?" I proposed to him in
November. "You become the director, you declare 200 thousand
income tax and then buy some property and nobody will suspect any
wrongdoing. If you don't pay your taxes, eventually someone will come
knocking at your door".

Dan agreed and
became the sole director of Exclusive Sports.

November
18
^th
,
2010, was a triple blast day: Egypt vs Australia in Cairo, Ecuador vs
Venezuela in Quito, Ecuador, and Egypt Under-23 vs Moldova Under-23,
also in Cairo.

I had already booked
Ibrahim for the match in Quito and another African ref for the
Under-23 match in Cairo. Dan suggested that we use a Bulgarian
official that he knew for the remaining game.

"It's a good
idea", I agreed. "We can use him for the Egypt vs Australia
match".

I
had sent Mohamed Hassan to Cairo to negotiate a deal with the Egypt
FA.
Hassan
didn't know much about football but had the right personality; I had
called him to brief him on his mission and to reassure him about the
obviousness of the task.

"You go there
and meet my guy in the Egypt FA", I explained. "Just tell
him that you are Exclusive Sports. They know the company already.
I'll call him to anticipate that you are on your way there; he'll be
waiting for you. Just try to convince the FA to use our African
referees in the Egyptian league and the Bulgarian ref in the Egypt vs
Australia game".

The Egypt FA turned
down our offer to provide African match officials in their league but
agreed to use our Bulgarian ref in their game against Australia.
Hassan had done a good job and was able to settle his outstanding
debts with the Singapore loan sharks to whom he owed money. Within a
few months' time working for me he had made nearly 200 thousand
dollars, a sum that I had never paid to any of my workers before.

Dan's
Bulgarian referee was a man called Anton, whom Kosta had provided.
Anton
had
been suspended by UEFA on the previous year for awarding four penalty
kicks during a Canada vs Macedonia friendly; the match had triggered
warnings due to its highly irregular and suspicious betting patterns.
I mean, a referee should know that awarding four penalties can give
rise to suspicion, especially if all the wagers on the match point to
three goals or above. Dan had been very unhappy with Anton's
performance on that occasion.

"After the
match", he told me, "we fucked Kosta and his referee. I was
screaming at them: 'Why the fuck did you give away so many penalties?
If the player misses, just say that the goalkeeper moved before the
kick and retake the penalty'. But neither of them were intelligent
enough to understand".

Somehow, Anton had
been cleared of wrongdoing and brought back to officiate further
official fixtures. Dan spoke to him before the Egypt game.