Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (37 page)

Zimbabwe was always
willing to travel for business so, in May 2009, I brought them to
Amman, Jordan. I had sent my standard overture e-mail to the Jordan
FA to establish a contact and then had started corresponding with
them. I had followed up with a phone call and had got the ball
turning.

In
a short span of time I was able amass close to four million Singapore
dollars; a huge sum of money in Singapore and probably anywhere else
in the world. I could have retired;
I
could have stopped doing dirty things and started investing
in
real estate.
In
Singapore you can buy a flat in a condominium before it is even
built. All you need to do is pay 20 percent of the actual price
upfront; if the flat is worth one million dollars, you pay 200
thousand in advance and the rest can be settled when the condo is
ready for moving in. By the time construction is finished, its value
will have increased by 300 thousand dollars. You sell it and cash in
on a handsome profit. I could have bought ten condos and would have
made three million dollars in three or four years' time just by
sitting there and shaking my leg. I had the brains to invest wisely
but I never
paid
heed to
my good intuitions. Don't ask me why, I don't know the answer myself.
I guess that
I was not thinking
ahead; I was just living my life day by day and, exception made for
my mother, I was alone. If I had had a family, in the back of my
mind, I would have thought: "Fuck, you're ready. Just go and buy
a house for them".

I did have a
girlfriend back then, with whom I had discussed the prospect of
marriage, but she was 19 years my junior and probably felt that it
was too early to tie the knot. She was also from a different
religious background and I was not willing to convert to Islam. I'm
not a Hindu fanatic but, if you convert, you lose the respect of your
fellow Indians and are ridiculed by your peers. Eventually our
relationship just died out and she got married to a Pakistani.

Since the business
with Ah Kang was producing a lot of money, the sums that I gambled
increased steadily; I was regularly placing one or two hundred
thousand dollar bets per match on the top European leagues. At one
point I was sitting in my same old coffee shop beside my home with
three million dollars in my jeans pockets. The money hadn't changed
me; I still had my simple Honda, which I rented from a friend's
friend, and my ordinary clothes. I didn't patronize expensive places,
just the same old coffee shop and the barber shop next door.

"Wilson, you
have money", asked the barber once as he cut my hair, "why
don't you wear a nice watch? You don't wear a watch at all, why is
that?"

"OK", I
thought, "it's time to buy myself a watch".

I spent 20 thousand
dollars on a Rolex but still sat in the same coffee shop and ate the
same Indian food. I wore my new shining Rolex on my wrist when I went
out to nightclubs. I paid off my mother's outstanding loan with the
Housing Development Board and helped my family clear all of their
backlogs. It's the only money that I put to good use; the rest, I
just gambled away.

On
May 16
^th
,
2009, my life took a 360-degrees turn. I dropped two friends off at
Singapore's Changi international airport: they were running late and
needed to catch a flight to Penang, Malaysia.
I
made a massive blunder when, instead of taking the East Coast
Parkway, I chose to try a new route to the airport. I arrived at
Terminal 2 in the nick of time and quickly parked the car along a
double yellow line on one side of the road. I left the ignition on to
let the security officers know that the driver must be somewhere
nearby, hopped out of the car and rushed my friends inside to the
check-in counter. The airline personnel told my friends that they
would not be allowed to board the flight so I attempted to convince
the manager to make an exception. He ran a quick check, gave them the
green light and off they strolled waving goodbye. After my friends
had boarded their flight, I stopped at McDonald's in the airport's
basement and grabbed a coke and a burger. As I returned to my car,
I saw two CISCO security guards standing next-to it.
CISCO are private guards that provide security in banks, airports and
prison departments all over Singapore. I knew that I was not supposed
to park my car on the yellow lines for too long but by then the
damage was done and I was ready to receive a 150 dollar parking
ticket.

"It's 150
dollars", I calculated. "Fuck the ticket, I easily gamble
tens of thousands per match. What's 150 dollars? It's not going to
change my life".

As I approached my
car, I addressed the guard politely.

"Brother",
I asked, "have you issued the summons?"

"Yes", he
replied.

I did not add
another word, then, as I made to open the car's door, the guard gave
me a sharp slap on the wrist.

"You're not
supposed to move your vehicle", he admonished. "The police
are on their way".

The slap received
blew my radiator and my blood began rushing to my head.

"You
mother-fucker", I shouted. "Who gave you the right to touch
me?"

When I get angry,
there's a lot of flavor to my words.

"Na bei
chee-bye! Lan jiao!"

As I continued my
out-pour of profanities in Hokkien, I saw the second CISCO officer
standing near the car watching the scene without intervening. Then
the first officer called out to him.

"Call for
back-up", he said. "This guy is violent".

The second officer
just ignored him and stood there enjoying my show. The situation was
getting out of hand so I walked back into the departure hall to cool
down while waiting for the real police to arrive. I thought things
over and remembered reading an article in the local papers which
claimed that CISCO guards had no right to detain or arrest an
individual. Perhaps I valued my ego and pride too much because I
chose to walk back to my car and drive away. I stepped out of the
terminal and made to climb into my vehicle when the officer tried to
stop me. I made shoulder contact with him, managed to push him aside,
opened the car's door and hopped in. The officer immediately rushed
in front of my vehicle and refused to move. I wondered why the guy
was being so overzealous in trying to apprehend me.

"You issued
your summons", I shouted from the car window. "Just let me
go. What else do you want from me?"

I fired up my
engine, put the car in reverse and began steering to my right to
avoid the officer. I drove backwards for about 20 meters but the
officer ran forward to prevent me from leaving. At that point I had
no intention of waiting for the cops so I just switched to first
gear, steered all the way to my left and started advancing slowly,
trying to avoid the fucker. Once my car passed him and I felt safe to
accelerate, I drove away. When the police arrived on the scene I was
nowhere in sight and the CISCO officers lodged a report in which they
were the sole complainants.

The car I was
driving on that day wasn't registered in my name, it was owned by a
Chinese friend of a friend, so when the police tracked him down from
the license plate number he gave them my personal details.

"Wilson Raj
Perumal was driving my car", he told the officers. "This is
his address".

The police showed up
at my mother's house. Since she is very protective of me, the minute
she saw the police at her door, she got very worried and decided not
to tell them where I was.

"My son doesn't
live here anymore", she said to the officers.

After the police
left, my mother called me.

"Wilson",
she questioned, "the police came looking for you. What
happened?"

"Nothing,
mother", I waved the matter aside, "it's just a small
thing, nothing to really worry about".

On the following day
I decided to turn myself in and walked to the closest police station.
I reasoned that it was only a traffic offense, nothing serious, but,
when I entered the police station, the officer asked me to sit down
and called another policeman over to handcuff me. Then he began
reading out the charges.

"Using criminal
force to deter a public servant from discharge of his duty", he
stated, "causing hurt by a rash act which endangers the life or
the personal safety of others; using vulgar language; driving without
a valid license and insurance".

"Criminal
force?" I said. "It's a fucking parking ticket".

I didn't have a
driving license but had been nevertheless driving in Singapore for 25
years without ever being pulled over for a single traffic violation.
Getting a driving license in Singapore is like scratching your nose
around your head so I never bothered to get one. The officer informed
me that the CISCO security guard had been treated for a mild
tenderness on his right shoulder and a contusion on his right knee.
He added that I had hit him twice with my car. No statement was
recorded on my part. I was arrested, transferred to the Bedok police
station where a 20 thousand Singapore dollars bail was set. In
Singapore, you cannot bail yourself out, you need somebody else to do
it for you, so I called Mega and told him where he could pick up the
money for me. Mega came to the police station with the cash and
bailed me out. On the following morning I was charged in court and
once again had to go through court bail; same amount, 20 thousand
dollars.

Meanwhile, my
relationship with Ah Kang had become more tense. He had become very
fussy, like a woman. When we did business together, at the slightest
dip in the market, he would immediately blame Bee Hoon and
I
.

"You fuckers
sold the information to somebody", he pointed his accusing
finger at us. "Look, the market is dipping".

One time I got so
annoyed with Ah Kang's diffidence that I told Bee Hoon: "Let's
switch from Over to Under and prove to this fucker that we did not
leak any information".

We proceeded to
change our regular three-goal plan to zero goals during a Syrian
league game involving Al-Nawair. Samir, my local agent, was in total
panic.

"Wilson",
he warned, "this is very crazy and dangerous".

"Just relay the
instructions to the defenders and to the keeper", I insisted.
"No goals, lock all the doors".

The match ended 0-0.

Undeterred
by my attempts to prove our loyalty, Ah Kang was quickly turning into
a very paranoid, hysterical mother-fucker. In late June 2009, he and
I organized an Under-17 Four Nation Invitational tournament in
Bahrain. Among other teams, I had invited the Kenyan Under-17
national team to participate.
An
African connection of mine had introduced me to a high ranking
official from the Kenya FA. I had spoken with him and had bought
tickets to Bahrain for the entire Kenyan delegation. Ah Kang
and I had shared the initial expense,
400 thousand dollars, and were supposed to divide the profits in
half. Ah Kang was not present at the tournament, which was played and
eventually won by Kenya. Unfortunately, there was no betting on any
of the matches and our 400 thousand dollars went up in smoke. It was
then that Ah Kang received a call from Dan.

"That fucker
Wilson took your money", Dan suggested. "He never organized
any tournament. He fucked you up behind your back".

For no apparent
reason, Dan had begun treating me like an enemy.

"He's cheating
you", Dan insisted.

The tournament had
been organized; I had newspaper cuttings and all, but the odds hadn't
popped up on the websites. I reasoned that Ah Kang was buying
everyone's stories too easily and wasn't intelligent enough to make
his own decisions. Since Ah Kang had become unreliable and the Gold
Cup in the United States was coming up, I decided to drop him and fix
it on my own. In late June, the Haitian national team was in Montreal
to play a friendly match against Syria. In order to further
consolidate my relationship with the Haitian players before the Gold
Cup, I sent Alassane, Sivarajan and Bee Hoon to Canada with 50
thousand US dollars for them.

"Spend this
money lavishly", I told the three. "Bring the boys out to a
strip club, buy them sports goods and just have a good time together
with them".