Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (39 page)

In mid-July I was
working on a five-nation Under-20 invitational tournament in Egypt
that I had organized to prepare for the Under-20 FIFA World Cup. I
had sent a letter to the Egypt FA offering the services of my bogus
company World Wide Events and Sports International; they had
reciprocated and I had called them up to arrange a meeting. I had
then dispatched my friend Anthony to Cairo where he had convinced the
Egypt FA General Secretary to endorse a proposal for a youth
tournament and to put his signature on our contract. Anthony was
about ten years younger than me and I had known the bastard since we
were snot-nosed kids. He and I had played in the same seven-aside and
eleven-aside social football team; we had a good relationship so I
thought it wise to bring him into the picture to help me in my
business. I arranged for Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Guatemala to
participate in the tournament; Anthony was in Egypt to oversee the
job. The Kenyan team was the weakest side on the field and lost by
some ridiculous scorelines: 7-1 against Egypt; 11-0 against Nigeria
and so on. We hadn't asked them to get thrashed by such extravagant
margins; they were simply not good enough. We fixers don't want our
teams to be embarrassed but, truth be told, once you are down by
seven goals, you might as well concede two or three more and make for
a huge profit. The tournament was up for betting, we made money and
Egypt walked away with the cup.

A month later,
in
mid-August 2009, I convinced the Malaysian FA to invite Kenya for an
international friendly match and flew the Kenyan national team to
Shah Alam, Malaysia, with my own money. I had no intention of fixing
the match; I just wanted to continue being in the Kenya FA's good
books in order to do business with them at a later time; I also
seized the opportunity to get close to a few of the Kenyan national
team players.
I placed roughly 50
thousand dollars on Kenya to win but they couldn't. The players began
to gel after a good 30 minutes, then the coach replaced three of them
and took the steam out of the game. Dumb fucker.

While in Malaysia,
Thana and I were sharing a room at the Grand Bluewave Shah Alam
hotel. It was nearly noon on the day after Kenya's match and we
didn't really have a plan. We were sitting in our room debating
whether to stay one more day or check out of the hotel in the evening
when, point blank, someone used the room's key to open the door from
the outside. The door swung open and four Indian guys stepped in
aggressively. I immediately recognized Pal among them. The old boss.
I had not seen him for almost a decade and there he was before me,
surrounded by his bouncers. Thana was speechless; he sat paralyzed in
his chair.

"Fuck. OK",
I said.

I was not the young
boy that Pal had met in Sembawang in 1993. Back then, he used to be
the big guy and I the nobody; just a tiny guppy in the sea. I had
never really liked him; he was too arrogant and there was never any
chemistry between us.

Pal just stood there
looking down at me so I decided to make the first move.

"Are you here
for the money or…"

I just said 'or'; I
was prepared for the worse but had no fear in my heart. If Pal and
his bouncers were going to stab me, I would never have pleaded for
mercy. I'm not a sheep; I would have tried to kill at least one of
them.

I still owed Pal the
80 thousand dollars that Danny had stolen from me after the Atlanta
Olympics in 1996.

"I don't want
to know who took the money", Pal had said back then, "you
owe me".

For a couple of
years I had bought time, then, when I went to prison in 1998, I lost
touch with Pal altogether. When I came out in 2001, I didn't look for
him. I was locked up again until 2006 and still had not seen or heard
from Pal until that day, when he suddenly barged into my hotel room.

"You owe me",
said Pal. "I am here to talk about money".

Once Pal had
revealed his aims, the tension subsided. He noticed that I was not
intimidated by him or his bouncers and gave up trying to threaten me.
Pal had brought his boys along just as a reminiscence of old times.
He wanted to show me that he still had power and that he was still
the same old arrogant Pal. But he was no longer my boss or the man
that I remembered during the Malaysia Cup years.

Both Dan and I were
match-fixers, I had even started fixing matches before Pal, but
neither of us even came close to making the money that Pal had made
back then. That's why, when people call me the Kelong King, I usually
reply: "Why are you calling me that? The King of Kelong is the
person who made the most money. He is the number one, that's the
hierarchy".

You had to give it
to him; to have China-men under your control is no easy task for a
non-Chinese, let alone for an Indian. In my eyes, Pal stole the
crown. He had the entire Malaysia Cup in his hands; sixty thousand
people that sat in the stadium watching a match without knowing what
its outcome would be. Only he knew. But those days were long gone. He
was now down and out and looked older. The big boss had lost his
shine and was growing bald and chubby.

"OK, take a
seat", I waved him to a chair. "How much do I owe you?"

"You owe me 60
thousand dollars", Pal said as he dismissed my offer to sit with
a jerk of the head, "the rest, you've already paid".

The Kingpin was
standing in front of me asking me for a mere 60 thousand dollars. The
very same man who had openly declared in front of a Malaysian Court
of Justice once: "I bet one million dollars on every fixed
game".

During that trial,
Pal had taken the witness stand and 'killed' people who had worked
loyally under him over the course of years.

"This guy did
this, that guy did that".

And he had gotten
away with it; his features had been concealed. His face had not been
exposed in the media or else everybody in Singapore would have known
how much of a mother-fucker he was. A member of the triads testifying
against his 'brothers'. Pal should have accepted to go inside for
five years, maybe even ten, but should have never turned
prosecution-witness.

"I thought I
still owed you 80 thousand", I said calmly.

"No", he
replied. "Your balance with me is 60, you've already paid 20
thousand".

"Is that so?"
I asked. "I don't even remember".

Pal was an arrogant
fucker and I didn't like him but he was not my enemy, nor did I ever
treat him as such.

"OK", I
said, "I only have 30 thousand in the room with me right now.
The rest, you can come and pick up on Monday".

He seemed satisfied.

"Deal", he
said. "Wilson, you've always been a gentleman. We'll see you on
Monday with the remaining 30 thousand".

Money owed is money
owed. Ten, twenty, one hundred years can pass, but until I settle my
debt, I still owe you.

I later learned that
Pal was on the run from Singapore, where he owed money to a number of
people. His Chinese creditors were not willing to discuss business
with him anymore, they were just looking for him to knife him and
kill him. Pal was hiding in Malaysia, he was broke, and somehow he
had managed to find out where I was.

"Here are your
30 thousand", I told Pal. "You'll get the rest on Monday.
Finished. Just give me a minute now, I'll see you downstairs in the
cafeteria for a cup of coffee".

After Pal and his
hired muscle had left the room, I explained the matter to Thana, who
was still recovering from the shock. We then made our way to the
hotel's lobby, had a cup of coffee with Pal, who later went his way.

Following the
unforeseen encounter with the old boss, I was left to marvel at who
had told him where I was staying. Coincidentally, Thana said that he
had recognized one of his bouncers.

"One of the
guys is called Tomboy", he claimed.

Apparently Tomboy
was a big gangster, and his brother an even bigger one. I called some
friends back home to find out more about them.

"Do you know
who this guy Tomboy is?" I asked them.

"Yeah, we know
him very well", they answered. "What's the problem?"

"Tomboy and Pal
came to my hotel room in Shah Alam. I'll give you ten thousand
dollars if you figure out who tipped them off on where I was lodged".

It was not a matter
of money. I owed Pal and I would have settled my debt with him. But
who the fuck tipped him off? My friends never came back to me with an
answer. On the following Monday, Pal got someone to call me and I
went to pay my outstanding balance to one of his runners. After
settling my debt, I returned to Singapore while Pal remained in
Malaysia like a hunted foe. Two weeks later I received a phone call.

"Hello Wilson,
this is Pal", he said in an unusually friendly tone. "Can I
borrow 30 thousand from you?"

"Who told you
that I was staying in Shah Alam?" I asked him. "This is
from man to man, I'm not going to go after him".

"Ah Blur was
the one who gave me your details", he said.

Dan.

I found it difficult
to believe him. I thought that he was just trying to remove the
actual snitch from the scene by diverting my attention to Dan. I
couldn't accept the fact that Dan had done something like that to me,
although he was effectively the only one who knew where I would be
staying.

"What about the
30 thousand?" asked Pal. "Can I borrow them from you?"

"OK Pal",
I told him, "let me see what I can do for you. I'll try to
arrange something and get back to you asap. You just wait for my
call".

I turned my phone
off and changed the SIM card and that was the very last time that I
heard from Pal.

Different people
adopt different methods for match-fixing. Some move in as sponsors,
take over a football club, insert players of their choice in the
lineup, then dictate the results. Some provide gambling credit to
professional players and officials then, when these begin to lose
money, suggest that fixing matches may be the only solution to settle
the bill. Others simply approach players or referees, win their
confidence and ask: "Do you want to do business?"

Ante and Milan, two
German brothers of Croatian descent, were masters of match-fixing;
they owned a Berlin coffee shop called Café King where they
invited players, referees and granted them access to a betting
website.

"Fuck",
thought footballers and officials as they sat in front of the
computer screen, "this is my business. I am professional in this
sport, who else can predict the outcome of a match better than me?"

But once they
started wagering, they could not take their eyes off the screen; they
ended up glued to the betting sites, like children to a video-game;
and this was real money that they were playing with, not rag dolls.
They would bet and bet until they got addicted. Once they started to
lose, their stakes climbed higher and higher in the desperate attempt
to win their money back, landing them yet deeper and deeper in shit.
Respected officials like Robert Hoyzer used to patronize Café
King; I was told that he was indebted close to one million euro after
spending some time in the coffee shop. When you owe that much money,
if you have the influence to fix a result, you'll fix it. All one has
to do is whisper softly in your ear: "Do you want to place 100
thousand euro on your next match? I will bet for you. Here is your
100 thousand and here is mine. You call the shots and decide who is
going to win: the choice is yours".

Through their novel
approach to match-fixing, Ante and Milan had become so influential
that they could fix a mixed parlay. In a mixed parlay, one has to
predict the outcome of three or more matches at once, and the
brothers could do it. They allegedly fixed World Cup qualifiers, UEFA
Champions League and Europa League matches, as well as domestic
league games in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Turkey,
Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Canada. I never met them but I
remember reading about them while in prison sometime in 2005 and
thinking: "Fuck, these guys are good".

The
two brothers were not betting through Dan, they had their own on-line
gambling account and didn't need a betting house. If you fix a German
league match, a single click is worth anywhere from 20 to 35 thousand
dollars. Within
five
minutes
from
kick off, you can punt one million dollars on any match. If Ante and
Milan were ever linked to Dan, it happened at a very late stage; I
don't know if and to what extent they knew one another. I do recall
that there was a Slovenian who was convicted together with them named
Dragan. He was allegedly in touch with Admir, but this is a secret
that he and the others will not surrender so easily. The whole
match-fixing business is clandestine. You have to lie low, avoid
throwing your weight around and showing off your connections; there
is no need to parade what you have or haven't done.