Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (49 page)

"Wilson",
he said, "settle your debt with Benny, you're a gentleman. You
lose, you pay".

"Fuck! OK",
I consented and called Benny to arrange a meeting.

I met him near
Orchard Road in downtown Singapore.

"I'll pay you a
first installment of 500 thousand dollars", I suggested, "I
don't have 1.1 million right now. You have to give me some time to
settle the balance: 600 thousand".

I reckoned that in
order to both repay Benny and make some money for myself, I had to
place one million dollar bets on the South African warm-up
friendlies. I needed someone with the capital in hand so I called
Dan.

"Do you want to
do business?" I asked.

"What
business?" he inquired. "Let's go for a coffee".

We didn't usually
talk about business over the telephone, so we decided to meet in a
downtown coffee shop to discuss the matter.

"There are
these World Cup warm-up friendly matches in South Africa", I
explained the deal to him.

"Can I see the
referees?" Dan asked. "Can I talk to them?"

"No problem",
I replied, "you can see them and you can talk to them".

"One million,
we divide by five", Dan proposed. "You bring me the
business and I give you a share. In case we lose, I will absorb the
loss first and will deduct your part gradually from the next
matches".

For the very first
time, Dan was asking me to become a shareholder in his syndicate.

"My European
partners will take the remaining shares", he continued, "they
are in big trouble, somebody fixed them up in Croatia. They were
arrested and need money urgently. They need at least one million
dollars to get out of prison".

Admir and Dino were
very active in Croatia and in other European countries. They were
moving around, just like I was, approaching players: "Can you do
this? Can you do that?"

"Why would
somebody want to fix them up?" I asked Dan.

"I don't know",
he said, "but they have to pay over one million euro to get out
of prison".

I ran a quick search
on the web and saw the pictures of Admir and Dino in the back of a
police van as they attempted to hide their faces from the
photo-reporters' cameras.

Once I had secured
Dan's support in financing the matches, I sent Anthony back to South
Africa to make the final arrangements. At that point, my part of the
job was done. I had developed the project, provided the company -
Football4U - the refs and the contracts. Since I could not leave
Singapore, the decision on what to do with the matches was strictly
up to Dan, who was financing the business and who would be physically
present in South Africa during the games. Before Dan's departure, I
told him about Anthony.

"He is my guy",
I explained, "his name is Anthony, he's already in South Africa.
He's going to run the show for you, pay him so much and so forth".

Dan flew to
Johannesburg in early May, five days before the first match. As he
was afraid to carry large sums of money on his person, he brought
Alassane with him to carry the cash for the bribes. We wanted to fix
money in hand to avoid unpleasant surprises. Before his trip, Dan
told me that Alassane was recently stopped in Argentina with 100
thousand US dollars on him and had barely avoided being charged by
the Argentinian border authorities.

"Why the fuck
would Alassane go to Argentina with that much money?" I
marveled. "He is not buying drugs with it, I hope".

Then I put two and
two together and solved the mystery on my own. I had noticed an
international friendly match between Haiti and Argentina which the
Haitians had lost by 4-0. I don't think that Dan was involved in
organizing the fixture but I figured that he had probably sent
Alassane over to see if something could be done, just like he had
done in Angola. Despite their fucking around with Haiti, my team, I
needed Dan for my South African fixes and wasn't going to ruin my
business by raising the Haitian issue with him again.

In
addition to Anthony, Dan and Alassane, I sent another trusted friend
of mine named George to oversee the matches in South Africa and to
keep me posted on the developments thereof.
George
is a Malaysian friend who sometimes
carried money for me; he is maybe ten years younger than myself. I
met him in the early 90's through a relative of mine, then, right
before the South African matches, I voiced my proposal to him.

"Hey George",
I asked, "why don't you help me out and carry this money to
South Africa".

George
was more adroit in the fieldwork
while Anthony was more gifted in the administrative side of the
business because he was fluent in English and had a more outgoing
character.

A couple of days
before the first warm-up friendly match kicked off, our referees
landed in South Africa and were welcomed by Dan and the others.

As we waited for the
South African show to commence, we were working on fixing some
matches in Jordan with a number of clubs from the local Al Manaseer
Jordanian Pro League, their top league. Since Dan was busy in South
Africa and I was stuck in Singapore, we decided to send Choo and a
friend of mine called Ronnie to Amman to run the show for us. Choo
and Ronnie linked up with our local contact, a man named Boxer, who
had been building up our network in Jordan for about a year. Boxer
lodged Choo and Ronnie in a tiny hotel and told them to leave their
things in the room before heading to the stadium for the match. As
usual, Choo carried about 70 thousand US dollars with him to pay the
players if the correct score happened to come their way, money which
he hid in the false ceiling of the hotel room's bathroom. During the
match, Boxer went missing and, when Choo and Ronnie returned to the
hotel, they found that their room had been completely ransacked. It
was clear to both that Boxer was responsible for the break-in.
Fortunately, Choo's hiding place had remained undiscovered and Boxer
was left empty-handed.

I received a call
from Dan, who was in Johannesburg. He told me about the incident and
added that Choo and Ronnie would be returning from Jordan shortly
thereafter.

"Thank God Choo
hid the money", I said to Dan, "if it had gone missing you
would have probably thought: 'Wilson Raj mother-fucker stole my
cash'".

We had a laugh and I
seized the opportunity to ask Dan if he could lend me 50 thousand
dollars. It was a gamble; I didn't know whether he was going to give
them to me. I figured that I had a 50-50 chance.

"Ok", he
said, "go to Ang Mo Kio and pick up the money". Then he
added, "Fuck. When are you going to pay me back?"

"I'll pay you
in two weeks' time", I replied.

"You better",
he admonished.

I must admit that
when I was down and needed cash, Dan was always there for me. He knew
that he had made and could still make a lot of money from me but, to
be honest, nobody else would have given me 50 thousand dollars just
like that. Ours was a sweet and sour relationship.

South
Africa vs Thailand on May 16
^th
,
2010, was the first of the World Cup warm-up friendlies organized by
Football4U.
Samwel
from Kenya
was
the designated referee for the match. We were ready to do business
but the bookmakers didn't offer any betting on the game, so we
dropped it. The final result was 4-0 in favor of South Africa.

As I later found
out, the Botswana FA's president, David Fani, happened to be the
match commissioner for the game. When he heard the name of our
company, Football4U, he jumped in his seat.

"Mother-fuckers
!"
he must have thought. "This
company again".

Fani remembered the
September 2009 China vs Botswana match that I had tried to fix. He
knew that my company, Football4U, had paid for his national team's
trip to China, so he decided to voice his concerns with Goddard.

"How come you
guys are doing business with Football4U?" he asked. "This
company was responsible for Botswana's trip to China in 2009 where
some individuals approached our team to fix the match. Because of
that match, one of my FA's executives was sacked".

Fani ignited the
fire in South Africa and Steve Goddard's doubts about Football4U were
confirmed. From that moment forth, Goddard kept us in his sights and
started flying left, right and center.

"These guys are
up to something", he reckoned.

On
May 24
^th
,
2010, South Africa was set to play against Bulgaria in the second of
the warm-up friendly matches. The designated referee was Kokou from
Togo. Dan spent a considerable amount of time with him and the
linesmen, educating them thoroughly on what needed to be done.

"We need a
total of three goals", he demanded.

"OK, boss. No
problem, boss", the ref and linesmen nodded.

However,
when Kokou and his boys stepped onto the pitch and saw 60 thousand
people on the stands, the mother-fuckers froze in panic. The match
kicked off and, at the end of the first half, the score was 1-1. We
wanted three goals in total, so we needed just one more goal to
secure our win. We were hitting on the total number of goals scored;
we didn't care which team scored them. The second half started; we
waited patiently but the extra goal just wasn't coming. Suddenly,
between the 60
^th
and 70
^th
minute of the match, the ball touched
a Bulgarian player's hand inside the penalty box. We didn't give a
shit whether it be ball-to-hand or hand-to-ball; we expected the ref
to award the penalty. But Kokou wasn't swift enough, he was too
shaky. Mother-fucker. The match ended 1-1; it backfired and we lost
our money. Despite being lectured by Dan for two full days, the ref
had failed to deliver and to walk away with the 60 thousand US
dollars that we had promised him and his linesmen; a sum that they
will probably never see again in their entire lives. After the match,
Dan confronted Kokou and the linesmen and fucked all three of them
for their poor performance.

"I didn't see
the ball touch the player's hand", Kokou defended himself.

"Fuck you",
shrieked Dan, "even if you don't see it, you still give the
penalty. What the fuck. If you are good for nothing, then you go back
home".

He gave Kokou and
his linesmen one or two thousand dollars each and sent them back to
Togo.

After the match, I
sent a friend called Mohamed Rais to South Africa to deliver money to
Jacob, our front-man inside SAFA. After the incident in Panama, where
Anthony had attempted to recover my money from the players without
informing me, I didn't really trust him anymore when he claimed that
he was supposed to hand over ten thousand dollars to the SAFA
officials. I therefore decided to send Rais to South Africa to check
on Anthony and deliver the money in his stead.

I had met Mohamed
Rais sometime in 2000 or 2001 and we had quickly become good friends.
He had been a referee in the past but had never fixed any matches
with me. Rais was quite a lively person to go out with and talk to. I
bumped into him in Singapore right before the South Africa matches.

"What are you
up to?" I asked.

"I'm driving a
taxi right now", he answered.

"Rais", I
proposed, "why don't you work for my company. I'll send you to
South Africa. I can pay you handsomely for your effort".

Rais began running
some errands for me and off he went to South Africa to pay Jacob his
ten thousand dollars.

Our
third match, South Africa vs Colombia, was played on May 27
^th
.
Again, the Kenyan referee Samwel and his linesmen were running the
show. All we wanted were three goals and, if the teams were so bad
that they didn't manage to score on their own, we would be forced to
give away penalties; even three per match. And that's exactly what
Samwel did. In the 15
^th
minute of the first half, the Kenyan
ref awarded the first penalty in favor of South Africa for a handball
in the Colombian box; a doubtful call. I think that Dan paid him
extra money after the match, because the Colombian goalie saved the
penalty but one of Samwel's linesmen flagged, claiming that the
goalkeeper had moved before the ball was kicked. The penalty was
kicked a second time and scored. Goalkeepers often make the first
move because, if they just stand there and watch the player kick the
ball, it's as good as a goal already scored. Some goalkeepers even
come two steps out of the goal-line before the ball is kicked.
Referees seldom ask for a repeat, but Samwel's linesman was swift and
raised his flag. Then, around the 20
^th
minute, the South African goalkeeper
blatantly took down a Colombian striker headed straight for the goal
inside the penalty box. Instead of giving the goalie a red card and
sending him off the pitch, Samwel gave him a yellow card and awarded
a penalty in favor of Colombia which managed to score the equalizer:
1-1.