Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (63 page)

"Hey", I
said to the woman, "I'm sorry".

I was placed back
inside my cell with an additional charge: attempting to escape police
custody.

On the following
day, some new officers showed up in front of my cell. My case had
been taken over by the NBI, the Finnish National Bureau of
Investigation. A really tall guy who said his name was Janne spoke to
me.

"So, Mr.
Perumal", he asked, "what can you tell us about this deal
you had with Tampere United?"

Fuck. The guy held a
copy of my unsigned agreement with the club in front of my face. I
had disposed of the contract with Tampere in the hotel's paper bin
after Dan had decided to call the deal off and that's probably where
the police had found it.

"What is this
1.5 million euro agreement you had with Tampere?" inquired
Janne.

"Fuck!" I
thought.

I tried to conceal
my reaction.

"I wasn't doing
anything with Tampere", I said, "I'm here simply because
I'm a gambler. I watch football matches and I bet on them".

"OK",
Janne raised his shoulders, then left.

I spent the rest of
the day staring at the wall, then, on the following morning, a rotund
looking NBI officer with a jolly smile came to see me. He said that
his name was Arttu and inquired as to the purpose of my visit to
Rovaniemi.

"I'm here to
bet on football matches", I stuck to my cover story.

"What is your
relationship with Musonda", he inquired.

"I'm his
friend", I said, "I usually ask for his opinion on his
team's strengths and weaknesses or anything else that can facilitate
me in my betting".

The police had
confiscated all of my belongings. My laptop, my mobile phone and the
suitcase with my clothes in it. In addition to these, they had also
found some folders containing all of my documents regarding the deal
with PoPa FC. The unfortunate thing about my laptop was that, the
second you turned it on, everything opened by default. All of my
passwords were saved in the system. You see, I don't belong to the IT
generation. I don't know how computers work; in fact, I type with two
fingers and am totally hopeless with technology. I never configured
the computer to log in to my accounts automatically, it just happened
to be that way and I thought: "Fuck. This is convenient. So be
it".

The
Finnish police must have also found it convenient when they accessed
all of the e-mails from my Exclusive Sports mailbox and the logs from
my Skype account; I had never bothered to log out from either. Then
they checked my mobile phone. All of my Finnish contacts were listed
as Finn-something: Finn that guy, Finn this guy. I didn't use real
names, I had made up some Finn-equivalent for Mweetwa, the Georgian
players
and so on. They
weren't listed as Finn-Georgia, but as Finn-George or something.
Arttu questioned me as to whom these phone numbers belonged to and I
answered that they were friends that I had met whose full names I did
not know or remember. The NBI had also noticed that I used a number
of different SIM cards.

"You change
your phone number very often", Arttu pointed out.

Sometimes, when I
happened to travel to remote places like Qatar, I would buy several
one-dollar SIM cards and load some credit on them. Then, when I had
to talk dirty things over the telephone, I would use a Qatari phone
number so that anyone wishing to stick their nose in my business
would have to submit a request for the call records in Doha. I am not
a smart-phone kind of guy so I just tried to keep a step ahead of the
system with what was within my reach.

The only phone
number among my contacts that the Finnish authorities were able to
identify was Finn-Musonda. They knew that there was a connection
between us but couldn't place him under arrest for being acquainted
with me. Then my Skype logs fucked everything up. The police searched
the log archive, which I had never bothered to delete, and found that
I had sent one thousand US dollars to Musonda in Zambia on Christmas.
The Western Union transaction number and details were all there. It
was enough for them to pick Musonda up too. Musonda was a soft-spoken
boy and not a tough nut to crack at all. When the police turned the
screw on him, he crumbled like a pack of cards and began singing.

"Why did you
send this money to Musonda?" Arttu asked me.

"It was
Christmas", I argued. "It was a Christmas present".

"But what was
its purpose?" he pried.

"Look", I
answered, "I bet on football matches. I made friends with this
guy, Musonda, and I generally get inside information on whether a
team is weak or strong from its players, that's all. I came here to
watch the RoPS matches and to bet on them. Period".

I was an expert in
police interrogation techniques; the Singapore CPIB had been my
training ground.

"You know",
smiled Arttu, "Musonda has already admitted to everything. We
have your telephone records that prove your link to him; Musonda
received messages from you and failed to delete them, so they are
also in our hands. Musonda hasn't deleted a single message since
2010".

I stood my ground
and kept my mouth shut.

"OK", said
Arttu. "What about the Yobe brothers? We know what you did with
them".

In that precise
instant I knew that I was fucked. The cat was out of the bag. If
Musonda had told the police about the Yobe brothers, it meant that
there was nothing that he had withheld from them. I would have
protected the two brothers at all costs. One of them was now playing
with HIFK, Helsinki's football club and Finland's finest team. I
would have gladly stayed in prison rather than ruin his career.

On
the following day, the rest of the Zambians and the two Georgian
brothers
from RoPS were
landed behind bars. Musonda had been singing and the others were
joining the choir one by one.

"This is true",
they admitted, "that's also true".

After
listening to them, Arttu came to me. He had a slip of paper with the
printout of the SMS that I had sent to Musonda after RoPS had failed
to grant us the four goals that we wanted against VPS on February
16
^th
.
He read the message out loud: "U guys are stupid. Where is the
one more goal? So close
n
still you can't get the job done".

"What's this?"
he asked joyfully. "Is this true?"

In normal
circumstances, I would have never spoken to the police. I had been to
prison in Singapore on four different occasions and not once had I
turned prosecution witness against my associates or enemies alike.
When you indulge in dirty business, you cannot side with the
prosecution. But here in Finland the circumstances were completely
different. I had a five-year prison term staring me in the face in
one of the world's most ruthless prison systems; locked up for 23
hours per day with nothing to do but read books. Five long years in
the shit-hole. The last thing that I needed was to antagonize the NBI
and be sent back to Singapore. The RoPS boys had already admitted to
their guilt; who was I to play the hero and fight a war that I could
not win? If anything, prison in Finland would have given me
sufficient time to find a way out of this mess.

I just went through
the motion: "Yes, yes, they did this, I did that".

Then I asked: "What
is likely to happen to me, Arttu?"

"Well", he
explained, "first they will charge you, then they'll send you to
prison. If you get a suspended sentence you will not go to jail and
will be deported to Singapore but, if you are sentenced to over one
year in detention, you will have to serve your time here".

One year? Two years?
For the first time in my life the prospect of going to prison was a
relief; the possibility that I would not be sent home so soon
produced a warm feeling of shelter and security. As expected, my
application for asylum on grounds of disproportionate punishment in
Singapore was duly rejected by the Finnish authorities. Then, in
early March, Dan bought a ticket for my sister and put her on a
flight to Rovaniemi to visit me. I wouldn't have blamed her if she
had decided not to fly all the way to Finland just to see me. I am
able to cope with unfortunate circumstances; the nature of this
business is such that you will have to be prepared for the worst.
When she was finally before me, we discussed my arrest.

"It must be
Benny", I told her, "he must have ratted me out".

"Benny called
me after your arrest", she said, "he claims that it was not
him. I've heard rumors that it could have been Anthony".

"Why would
Anthony want to do something like this to me?" I argued.

"I don't know",
she replied, "but rumors in Singapore are rife".

My sister stayed in
Rovaniemi for about a week, then flew back to Singapore.

One day, as I walked
from the shower to my cell, I examined the other rooms in police
lock-up.

"Fuck", I
thought, "there is a television set in that room. It's either a
computer screen or a TV".

I decided to ask one
of the prison guards about the rooms with screens in them.

"What's that?"
I queried. "Do you have computers in there?"

"No", he
replied, "that's a television".

"You mean",
I paused, "am I allowed to stay in there?"

"In order to
stay in there", he answered, "you will need the permission
of your investigating officer".

I immediately
checked with Arttu.

"Yes", he
replied, "you can move in there if you want".

"You mean that
I can stay inside that room and watch the television?" I asked
again, trying to figure out whether it was some sort of Finnish joke
they were playing on me.

"No problem",
explained Arttu, "you are not a pedophile; yours is not a big
case or anything like that. I can put you in that room if you wish".

"If it's OK",
I said, "you put me in there".

"Fuck", I
thought, "TV? This is like a 3-star hotel in Geylang".

It was the end of
winter and, while everything and everyone outside was still freezing,
I stayed in what seemed to be a comfortable retreat; light years away
from prison in Singapore. I had my hot coffee mixture and the BBC; I
could shower once a day; I was allowed to place orders for pizza and
soft-drinks twice a day; I got my lawyer to buy some books for me.
Life was OK. After a few days spent watching television, I called
Arttu.

"Arttu", I
inquired, "is it possible to get some dumbbells?"

I needed to do some
exercise to keep in shape.

"I will speak
to the warden and let you know", replied Arttu.

He soon came back
and, with the same old smile pasted on his face, informed me that
weights were not allowed in police lock-up.

"Sorry Wilson",
he said, "it's not possible to bring dumbbells in here".

"It's OK",
I replied, "if you get me two bottles of mineral water, two
two-liter bottles, I'll just use those".

I got my bottles and
I was trying to keep in shape. I would do push-ups, lift my weights,
go for a shower, come back, watch the news, read a book. The only
downside of police lock-up in Finland was the food.

"Arttu", I
complained, "the food is very bad in here".

"What do you
want me to buy for you?" Arttu asked.

I hesitated at
first, I couldn't bring myself to believe that he would go out there
and get food for me. Then I gave him a list of what I wished to have
and he went out to buy the items that I had requested. I stored the
food in the police station's fridge and would use their microwave to
heat my meals. It didn't feel like a prison anymore.

You see, the true
aim of a term in jail is to keep one secluded from the rest of
society. But the Singapore prison system takes it to another level:
they deprive you of news, proper food, restrict your communications
to once a fortnight and conjugal visits are not allowed. When a
prisoner is sentenced to serve five years in prison, he can kiss
goodbye to his family; it is very rare for a woman to wait that long
for a man. Many families are broken apart by heavy prison sentences;
only the ones that are gifted with an incredibly strong emotional
bond have a chance to survive. I was beginning to understand what the
Finnish flight marshal had meant when he had said, "We are a
civilized country".