Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (58 page)

"This is the
same mother-fucker who destroyed our game in Bolivia at the Copa
Aerosur", growled the Bolivians. "Same guy".

The Bolivians were
furious and Lengyel had to be escorted out of the pitch by the
police.

To make things
worse, the Argentina FA president was sitting in the stands watching
the match. Nobody was aware of match-fixing in Latin America until
then but, after that single game, the entire continent was woken from
their innocent slumber. The TV was airing the offside goal again and
again.

"What the fuck
is going on here?" people demanded to know.

They might have
thought that they were brazen but, in truth, Dan and Zeekay were just
two fucking morons. The match was aired live on television and the FA
president was sitting right there in the stands. You don't fuck with
a match that involves the home team. For a single game with a small
fucking volume - the Copa Cordoba was worth a miserly two thousand
dollars per click - Dan and Zeekay had destroyed the business that I
had set up for them. Until that day, our network had been expanding
in Latin America: Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador; all had gone smoothly
and nothing had been exposed until that damned Argentina match. Dan
and the others were all grown-ups with extensive match-fixing
experience. You can occasionally lose a match, so be it, it can
happen from time to time; you lose one, never mind, you'll recover in
the following game. There may be times when you have to lose even
after your referee has awarded three penalties because the players
miss all three. I remember a match between Singapore and Thailand
during one of the King's Cups. We had the referee on our side and had
placed our money on Over. The ref awarded a penalty in favor of
Thailand but the player missed it so he granted him a second chance;
the player missed again. After the match, I remember speaking to the
ref.

"Even if I had
made him retake the penalty five times", he told me, "he
would have missed all five".

It's
stupid to think that you will never lose; no matter how much effort
you put into your fixing, the ball is still round. I was furious with
Dan; and he was continuing to go behind my back, fixing games with my
runners Mohamed Hassan and Anthony without giving me my share. On
Christmas eve, Dan and Mohamed Hassan took Kuwait, Zambia and North
Korea to Egypt to play a number of international friendly matches
without so much as a phone call. They even brought Ibrahim along to
do business there. Why should I divide my profits into five shares
when these fuckers steal my contacts and men without even letting me
know?
I
began questioning the convenience of my business relationship with
Dan and his syndicate.

At the end of 2010,
Dan organized another New Year's function in Singapore and invited
all of his associates: referees, players and runners. I could not
attend, of course, because I was on the run. I received a call from
Jean, the Haiti national team's goalkeeper.

"Can you get me
a ticket?" he asked.

Jean had already
called Dan to ask him for one.

"Fuck you",
Dan had replied, "You go and buy your own ticket. You come here
and I'll give you a hotel room and food, but the airfare; I'm not
going to pay for that".

Jean thought of
calling me next and I decided to help him; we had met a few times
during my stay in London so I got my agent to issue him a ticket to
Singapore from the UK via Frankfurt, Germany. Jean, however, didn't
want to travel on such a lengthy flight, so he called Dan again.

"Dan" he
asked, "I don't want to fly via Frankfurt. Can you get me a
direct flight? Please".

I thought that Jean
was already on the airplane when Dan called me.

"What the fuck
is going on with Jean?" he asked.

"What do you
mean?" I said. "I bought him a ticket to Singapore".

"Why didn't you
get him a direct flight from London to Singapore?Why the fuck did you
get him to stop over in Frankfurt?"

"My agent told
me that it was the only available flight", I replied. "It's
New Year's".

Dan finally gave in
to Jean's request, had another ticket issued and Jean was in
Singapore in time for New Year's. Since I couldn't go, I asked
Armando to fly there and attend the function in my stead. The boys
all met at a Singapore hotel; Kosta, Zeekay, Javier, Anthony and
Alassane were there, while Admir and Dino were still busy picking
their bone with authorities in Croatia. It was like a mafia meeting
with all the bosses and their runners.

A few days later, I
got an unsettling call from my travel agent in Singapore.

"Wilson",
she said, "I received a strange telephone call today. The person
at the other end of the line said: 'I am calling from the Hong Kong
airport. We would need to confirm the passport details of Wilson Raj
Perumal. What passport is he using? We need his passport number'. I,
of course, didn't give out any information about you".

My travel agent knew
Anthony, Danny and all the other guys, but hadn't recognized the
voice on the other end of the line.

"Wilson",
she warned, "be careful. Somebody is after you".

After hanging up the
telephone, I sat down and thought about who it could be but couldn't
come up with an answer.

In early February
2011, I received an unexpected call from Dan.

"Today
something happened", he sounded excited. "Your share is
about 60 thousand. I will do the calculations tonight and will give
you your part of the profits".

"Which
matches?" I asked.

"Napoli vs
Sampdoria 4-0 and Brescia vs Bari 2-0".

"Fuck", I
was shocked. "You've got the Italian Serie A?"

"Sampdoria said
that they could only give me 2-0 and the final result was 4-0",
complained Dan. "If they had told me earlier, I would have made
big money. And Bari, if they had given me one more goal, I would have
won both handicap and Over, double bell".

"The Italian
top league, this fucker is playing real big", I thought.

Dan explained that
he hadn't fixed the Italian matches; the players' agents had come to
him.

"Can you place
a 600 thousand euro bet for us?" they had asked.

He was ecstatic.

"Fuck", he
joyfully announced, "I don't even have to pay the cost for
fixing anymore. I don't need to pay the players, all I have to do is
bet 600 thousand euro for them. I can do that in three minutes; one
25 thousand euro click every three seconds, then I can continue to
wager my own money for the rest of the match".

For
some reason Dan decided to give me a share for each of the two
Italian matches; something he had never done in all the years that I
had known him.
I
had become a shareholder in Dan's syndicate during the South African
World Cup but, apart from the warm-up friendlies, this was the first
money that I received from the syndicate
for
a match that I was not directly involved in. Dan issued the payment
in Singapore and I got som
ebody
to go and pick up the money. That's how we usually functioned; the
day after a match, I would go to Dan's home or wherever he asked me
to meet his runners and the money would be there.

"Go to this
place", he would say, "somebody will be there for you with
your cash".

Now that I was on
the run from Singapore and that Dan couldn't come to Europe anymore,
I used my friends back home to pick up the money for me; very rarely
did we use a bank, everything was always settled in cash. Dan would
sometimes rely on the services of an illegal remittance company that
could deliver up to 100 thousand dollars per day in any part of the
world. It was common practice among match-fixers; when I did business
with Ah Kang, our money transactions worked in the same way, without
the help of a bank. Getting money from China to Singapore was never a
problem, there were plenty of legal and illegal remittance operators.
You simply had to call them.

"Where do I
collect my money?"

"Go and see
this lady in this shopping center at Boon Lay and pick up your
money", they would say. "This is her number. You call her
when you get there and she will come to you".

I'd call the lady.

"Where do we
meet?"

"McDonald's in
five minutes?"

"OK".

The lady would show
up holding a bag filled with cash. We would walk to my car together,
count the money, shake hands; end of story. Everything was paid in
cash, irrespective of the amount.

After years in this
business, I am in the habit of scrolling the FIFA website to be
updated on international fixtures. A few days after receiving the
money from Dan, as I was doing my homework on who is playing who, I
came across two international friendly matches that drew my
attention: Bolivia vs Latvia and Estonia vs Bulgaria. Both games were
going to be played in Antalya, Turkey, on the same day. Antalya is a
very popular venue for friendly matches played in January or early
February because teams can travel there and avoid the cold European
winter. According to my experience, these were very strange fixtures
and I was aware that Dan had organized some matches in Antalya
before. I knew that Bolivia didn't have enough money to travel within
Latin America, let alone fly to another continent. Who would watch
them play? Who would buy the television rights for their matches? It
didn't make any sense; the name 'Anthony' was written all over these
games. Bulgaria vs Estonia also had a sinister ring to it. I had been
informed that Anthony was busy traveling on behalf of Dan - he had
even approached the Finnish FA at one point - and that he had built
solid connections in Estonia.

"Dan is giving
me a share for Italy while he fucks me over in Turkey", I
reckoned.

As I stared at the
fixtures on my computer screen, I picked up the telephone and rang up
Sivarajan.

"Sivarajan,
look", I said, "there is this game coming up: Bolivia vs
Latvia. I am very sure that this is the work of Anthony. Prepare
funds for this match, we will send Murugan to Turkey and, if we see
the referees wearing headsets, then we will be 100 percent sure that
Dan is involved. If he is, we will go for total goals, Over; Dan will
never go Under, even if you place a gun to his head. Oh, and Siva",
I expressly advised him, "do not speak about this to anyone".

The very next day I
received a call from Dan.

"This
mother-fucker Sivarajan, fucking bastard", Dan was screaming.
"He's going around telling people that the Antalya matches are
going to be fixed and that the refs will be wearing headsets".

"Did he really,
Dan?" I asked innocently. "Who did he go and tell?"

"Fucker said
that I will do Over, 100 percent", he whined. "You tell
this bastard that I will go Under if I please".

"Sure".

"You tell this
bastard", shouted Dan, "that I will make this game end 0-0,
OK? I can kill the bastard on this match, you know that I can. You go
and tell him".

I called Sivarajan.

"Siva, you
fucking incontinent bastard", I roared. "You chee-bye in
the mouth. Did I not tell you very clearly to keep the information to
yourself? Did I speak to you in Hebrew or something? Which part of my
statements did you fail to understand, you fucker?"

I fucked Sivarajan
inside out. He kept mum at first then began cursing Rais.

"I only told
Rais", he claimed.

Mohamed Rais was
like a prostitute. One minute he would be with you and the next he
would switch sides. If he needed five or ten thousand dollars, he
would trot to Dan with some information and Dan would give him some
cash in return; he was Dan's pooch.

After hanging up on
Sivarajan, I called Murugan.

"Murugan",
I instructed, "go to Antalya and check if the ref is using a
headset. If you recognize the referee, you let me know and keep your
eyes peeled for penalties. The moment you sense something, ring me up
and we will hit them from the back".

On
February 9
^th
,
2011, the show was on in Antalya, Turkey: Latvia vs Bolivia and
Estonia vs Bulgaria. Murugan landed there before the kick off. He
knew Dan and all the referees that Dan used; after all, Murugan had
worked with Dan and Bryan for a good five years. He called me to
brief me on the situation.