Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (44 page)

Too bad, I had
plenty of other matches available at that stage. In 2009, money was
just pouring in. I was fixing four matches in a single day; two here,
two there; I was one of the busiest people around and barely had any
time left for other activities. Through investments on airline
tickets and all the other expenses, I gave Singapore's economy a
substantial shove. This business is all about flying people left and
right: in the year 2009 alone, I spent close to 1.5 million dollars
on airline tickets for myself, my runners and my teams. It's a lot of
money for someone running his business from the back of a photocopy
shop.

After
Ah Kang and I had fucked each other up, I had a hard time finding
another reliable betting house that offered decent betting volumes.
Had I found one, I could have made ten million dollars in that year
alone, instead, I was gambling on my own most of the time. I had
opened a series of accounts on a number of gambling websites and I
placed my own bets with my finger glued to the left-click button. Had
I used a betting house, for every 200 thousand dollars that I made on
my own, I could have earned 600 thousand. Even though my total
revenue was affected, I still made good money and gambled heavily on
other games that I had not fixed. I thought of starting my own
betting house at one point but reckoned that I would have had to look
for numerous complacent agents from several gambling companies. You
need a network of people that can be trusted to run a betting house
and I don't know that many agents with such 'high'
levels
of integrity; it's a different
profession to all effects. And sometimes there are bosses or
big-shots that are concealed behind these betting houses. They have a
reputation, they hand out their website to a manager and take a
percentage at the end of each month: 20 percent of all profits
without being involved in the dirty part of the business.

The
court hearing for the incident with
the CISCO officer at the Changi airport was due on December 29
^th
,
2009. Despite my legal woes, my business could not be neglected, and
I needed revenue to feed my gambling habit. I was sending other
people out in my stead and juggling everything at once: calling my
contacts, sending out runners, fixing matches and trying to manage my
court case. I paid very little attention to my first hearing because
I trusted my lawyer. Rajendra Prasad had introduced him to me; he was
supposed to be the professional and was being paid as such. I will
remember the hopeless mother-fucker until the day that I go to my
grave.

"Let him do his
job", I thought.

A
few days before the hearing, I decided to take a short break and
travel to the Netherlands to meet a player who was competing in the
Eredivisie, the Dutch top league. My aim was to ask him to assist me
in contacting European FAs willing to go to Africa to play
international friendlies. My African contacts could get their teams
to travel abroad when invited, but it was impossible to have European
teams visit them at home unless properly arranged.

While
in
Amsterdam, I managed
to lose three million dollars on football matches in a single night.
I began with Celtic FC vs Hearts FC, then moved on to some Italian
and Spanish league matches until my credit had run out. On the
following day and with a heavy heart, I was set to travel to the UK
for a brief holiday. In the airport there were signs posted all over
the place that read: "Declare your money if you are carrying
more than 20 thousand euro". I was absorbed in thought and did
not bother to declare anything but, when it was my turn to hand over
the boarding pass, an officer pulled me aside for a random check.

"How much money
are you carrying, Sir?" he inquired.

I knew that I
couldn't lie, if I did, they could have taken all of my cash from me
for trying to mislead them.

"Fifty thousand
euro", I replied calmly.

The officer was
taken aback.

"Can I see it?"
he asked.

"Of course",
I said and unzipped my handbag, handing the money to him
nonchalantly.

"I am afraid
you will have to miss this flight", he remarked and escorted me
to a nearby office. I was given a series of papers to sign and
slapped with a three thousand euro fine for failing to declare my
valuables.

"Fuck", I
said to myself, "I just lost three million and now these fuckers
want another three thousand from me".

"Can I appeal?"
I asked.

"Of course you
can. You can appeal at the Dutch Embassy in Singapore. In fact, if
you don't appeal you may be banned from entering our country for two
years", he added.

"See you in two
years then", I thought as I boarded my flight to the UK.

While in London, I
was feeling really down and didn't have the clarity of mind to think
straight. I felt a sudden severe concern for my hearing coming up in
Singapore so I decided to send an SMS to my lawyer and suggested a
different approach.

"I want to
plead guilty and settle this matter asap", I wrote in the text
message.

Upon
returning to Singapore all negative thoughts were swept clean from my
mind as I had very little spare time on my hands. Zimbabwe was flying
to Asia for their 2009 international friendly tour. They were
set to play against Thailand in
Bangkok on the same day of my hearing; Danny was going to be with the
team to make sure that they
danced
to our tune. The day before the
hearing I met with my lawyer.

"How long do
you think my sentence will be?" I inquired.

"If you plead
guilty, you'll get a short sentence", he said. "I cannot
say how short, but it will not amount to much".

"Fuck", I
thought, "three, four months behind bars? Sounds OK. I'll be out
before the World Cup. Go to prison, play some basketball and come out
fit, then get back to work. Or I could take the conviction, appeal,
jump bail, go to the World Cup and surrender at my own pace".

On the day of the
hearing I was eyeing the presiding judge attentively. He had a
reputation among criminals in the lower courts for being a real
mother-fucker and allegedly hated repeat offenders: the worst
possible judge for someone like myself. I consulted my lawyer again.

"What is your
relationship with this judge?" I asked him.

"Pretty good",
he boasted with a degree of confidence.

Judges sometimes
have more sympathy for an accused if they know his lawyer.

"A little
sympathy won't hurt", I calculated, "this is such a simple
matter. Why would somebody want to slap me with a heavy sentence for
it?"

The
judge
read the charges
against me then gave a wrap-up of the events: "The accused tore
and threw the summons away claiming that the police could not do
anything to him. He then used criminal force to enter his vehicle and
accelerated his car, hitting the CISCO security officer on the knee
twice".

The
reconstruction of the incident was absolute rubbish. A child trying
to get his brother reprimanded and slapped
on
the ass by his parents could have
been more impartial.

"I am a man and
I don't lie about such trivial things", I objected. "I was
holding a coke and a burger with both of my hands and could neither
tear nor throw the summons. To corroborate what I'm saying, your
honor, there is a CCTV recording of the entire incident".

"Destroying the
summons is of no consequence", rebuffed the judge. "Let's
hear the plea".

I
pleaded guilty to the charges against me. The sentence was set to be
read on January 27
^th
,
2010, and my bail was set at 20 thousand Singapore dollars.

As I stepped out
from the courthouse I dialed Danny's number; Thailand vs Zimbabwe was
to kick off within minutes. Everyone was taking Thailand and the odds
were unfavorable; I couldn't afford to have the Zimbabweans lose by
an ample margin or we wouldn't have made any money from the match.

"Make sure
Zimbabwe goes for a draw or at least that they don't lose by more
than one goal", I recommended to Danny. "One goal is OK,
two are not. Get the coach to park a bus at the back in front of the
goal".

The
first half of the match ended one-nil for Thailand so we didn't want
any goals scored in the second half but, with ten minutes to go,
bam-bam, Zimbabwe conceded two goals within a three-minute time span.
Danny was enraged with the players; he called me and we both felt
that someone else, maybe another fixer, had bypassed us and made a
different agreement with the Zimbabweans. The first name that came to
our mind was Nguyen, the Vietnamese fixer that I had met in Hanoi.
We were operating in his region and
Danny had spotted him in Zimbabwe's
hotel prior to the match. Nguyen had come to see us in Singapore
three times already, but he was a very stingy guy, a real scrooge.
His group could not reach the kind of betting volume that we could
obtain on our own and we hadn't taken them seriously. On top of that,
the Vietnamese were very hard to deal with; they would ask for more
goals than were usually needed to overcome the betting companies'
handicap and demanded for a precise timing in the scoring. It's very
hard to work with people who require
that
goals
be scored
solely between the 40
^th
and 45
^th
minute of a match. The three minutes
between Thailand's second and third goal were food for thought.

On
the following day, I was on the move again. The court had agreed that
I could temporarily leave the country so I traveled to Malaysia,
where the local national team was set to play against Syria in an
international friendly match that I had organized. I had selected and
instructed a Kenyan referee to officiate the fixture; h
e
awarded three penalties and, by the 70
^th
minute
of the match, I left the stadium to collect my winnings. I didn't
even need to watch the rest of the game. Why
wait
for the match to end when you've already won? Fuck that, three
penalties, three goals, end of the story. Malaysia won the game by
4-1. My move from players to referees was beginning to pay off.

On
New Year's eve, Zimbabwe was scheduled to play another match against
a local Malaysian club, Selangor FA. There was no betting on this
particular game and there were no conditions attached, so Zimbabwe
stepped on
to
the field and easily won by three
goals to nil.

That same evening
Dan organized a New Year's dinner with his European associates and
their respective families. They all flew to Singapore and were lodged
at the Shangri-La Hotel. I stopped over just to say hello. Admir and
Dino were there with another member of the syndicate, Kosta, from
Bulgaria. Kosta fit well into the picture with Admir and the rest of
Dan's partners; he too liked to play the big boss. He was a high
flier; he dressed well, drank wine and tried to always behave like a
millionaire. He kept five or six different bottles of wine open on
his table and took just a tiny sip from each; one here, another one
there. He had been arrested in Greece and extradited to Germany in
late 2008 for cigarette smuggling, a modest offense, and had received
a suspended sentence. Now he was back in business and had joined
Dan's syndicate some time before.

Kosta had a
different, unique way of approaching teams: whereas I approached
players, coaches and referees, he would go straight to the president
of a club or of an FA. Kosta also had powerful connections in Turkey
and Greece, and would ask the clubs' presidents to do the dirty work
for him. From Thessaloniki, with the help of a number of club owners,
he was fucking with the Greek league big time. Through him, I think
that Dan and the others must have made big money in Greece and in
Turkey as well. During the 2008-2009 season, Kosta had owned a
football club in Bulgaria. The club played in the A-Group, the
Bulgarian top league, but after Kosta came out of prison he was
broke, as was Dan at the time, so they decided to bring the club
down. They did it gradually, losing one match at a time and betting
100 thousand dollars per game. The goals were coming according to the
required timing and, by the end of the season, Kosta's club was
relegated. He sold it and had enough money to join Dan's syndicate
and get things moving again.