Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (54 page)

"I want three
goals in the first 30 minutes", I could have told them. "Go
and get the job done".

Defensive boys could
do the dirty work and allow their opponents to score if the offensive
boys could not manage to put the ball in the net. If the strikers
scored three goals, then the defenders could just concede one. Final
result, 3-1; total goals, four. Fuck, we could have won the match and
taken the money too. We could have gambled up to one million
Singapore dollars per game at win-8, which means that a one million
dollar bet can produce an 800 thousand dollar profit. But I was not
calling the shots with RoPS and had to work with what they had.

By September 2010,
Armando, the El Salvador-born Nicaraguan player, had suffered a knee
injury and wasn't playing anymore. He had fallen in love with a
Paraguayan girl and word had spread about his involvement in
match-fixing. The Nicaragua FA sacked him following the national
team's loss to Guatemala 5-0 and he was later banned for life. Once
he was suspended, he became a full-time fixer. I had sent Armando to
the United States to fix a CONCACAF Champion's League match between
Real Salt Lake and Deportivo Arabe Unido. While he was there, he was
joined by Alassane, who was working as a full-time runner for Dan.
Through Alassane, Armando was introduced to Dan. Working from
Paraguay, Armando began building his network and moving into domestic
South American leagues, like the Colombian league. He also started
proposing business directly to Dan, who decided to call me and ask
for my advice.

"Armando called
me to say that he has a Colombian team in his hands", said Dan.
"What do you think?"

Dan had already lost
money on a match in Paraguay organized by Armando. The manner in
which we lose is extremely important. The way players behave on the
pitch, whether they show commitment or not, is paramount. Dan had
financed the fix of a league game in Paraguay and Armando had fucked
it up.

"Let me talk to
him", I told Dan, then called Armando.

"Armando",
I inquired, "your team can or cannot give us the result that we
want? If they cannot, then we don't push with the betting, you
understand? We are not desperate".

"Don't worry",
Armando reassured me, "this team is 100 percent. They can
deliver".

Armando's team was
competing in the Colombian Categoria Primera, division one, and was
relegated in the 2010 season. Fortunately, the match was successful
thanks to Armando's dirty work.

Around that time, I
received a call from a friend in Singapore.

"There is a new
betting house in town", he informed me, "a guy who can
throw some pretty heavy bets".

"Give me his
number", I replied.

My friend gave me
the number and I called the new betting house.

"What volumes
can you offer?" I asked. "Maybe next month or the month
after the next I might be doing some matches and I may need to use
your betting house".

A few minutes after
the call, my phone was ringing: it was Dan.

"Hey", he
asked, "some Indian guy called my betting house saying that he
wanted to do stuff. Was it you?"

"Yes", I
answered, "it was me".

"Fuck",
Dan said, "you are all trying to fuck me up. If you try to bet
with my betting house, I'll just tell them to take your deposit and
run".

Exactly the same
thing that happened to me with Ah Kang. I put two and two together
and figured that this mother fucker must have been the one who had
instigated Ah Kang into stealing my money.

On
September 7
^th
,
2010, Togo was in Bahrain for an international friendly match that I
had organized.
I
had instructed the Bahrain FA to send an e-mail to the Fédération
Togolaise de Football (FTF) and to wait for them to reciprocate. My
contact in the FTF was the assistant coach Bana, who already knew how
to assemble a team that could dance to my tune; he had already
assembled one for the July youth tournament in Egypt and had been
suspended for doing so. After a few days the Bahrain FA called me
back.

"We tried to
send the e-mail", they complained, "but it's bouncing back.
The FTF isn't receiving the invitation".

"Just give me
the official invitation letter", I told them.

I was coordinating
the job from London. I called Bana in Togo, sent him the invitation
and asked him to get everything ready for the match.

"Prepare the
team", I said, "and send the team-list to me. I will
forward it to Bahrain".

Through my
mediation, the Togolese reciprocated. Bana couldn't get the national
team to travel because the official squad was set to play in Botswana
a few days before our fixture, so he just assembled a bogus team and
sent it over to Bahrain. At first, I had no idea that the Togo
players were a bunch of impostors; I hadn't been informed and usually
had no role in deciding which players the FA's picked for their
matches. Why would someone need to send a fake team when the real
team, or rather a patchwork-team of Under-23 domestic players, could
be formed? They could have worn a Togo jersey, played, and flown back
home; as simple as that. I was supposed to travel to Bahrain for the
match but missed my flight. As far as I knew, I had both the ref and
the players on my side: a total of 14 men against 11. I had
designated Ibrahim and two linesmen who knew what they were supposed
to do to officiate the match. Somehow, rumors of the fix had spread
uncontrollably and everyone was hitting on Bahrain to win by 3.5
goals or more. As the game kicked off, I received a call from a
distressed Dan, who was placing our bets from Singapore.

"The odds are
so bad that we can make money only by keeping the score low", he
explained.

"OK", I
replied to Dan, "let me check and revert to you".

There was no choice
but to take Togo, so I needed Bahrain to win by less than four goals.
I called Bana, who was sitting on the Togo bench.

"Can
you hold Bahrain
to
a draw and not allow them to score?"

"Give me five
minutes", he said.

A minute later,
Bahrain scored the first goal and went ahead one-nil. I immediately
rang Bana up again.

"Pack the
defense and no more goals until I tell you. And yell at Ibrahim in
French: 'No more goals, kill the match. Everything is off-side'".

I could always count
on my star referee. Ibrahim disallowed something like five goals and
the final score was 3-0 in favor of Bahrain, just below the Over 3.5.
The 20-or-so spectators at the stadium didn't care; we swiped the
table and took the win.

On the following
day, however, some Togolese journalists surfed the FIFA website and
found out about the fixture with Bahrain.

"Why didn't we
know about this match in Bahrain?" they wondered. "We're
Togolese journalists and we were not informed that our national team
was playing. How is that possible?"

The
bubble burst. The media were flooded with articles about the match
with the fake Togo lineup and Bana was immediately fingered by the
Togolese FA as the person responsible for the bogus team's trip to
Bahrain. Up until that match, I had enjoyed a very good relationship
with the Bahrain FA.
Every
time I arranged a fixture for them, they always came out winners.
Bahrain were very close to qualifying for the World Cup in 2010; the
play-offs saw them pitted against New Zealand, nil-nil at home. In
the return leg, they missed a penalty and the New Zealanders won the
match. It was a huge loss for me: I wanted Bahrain to qualify for the
final stages more than the Bahrainis themselves. Had they made it to
the 2010 World Cup, I would have arranged a minimum of four warm-up
friendly matches for them and they would have won all four. The
profits would have been unbelievable. Instead, Bana
and his fake team managed to fuck
everything up with Bahrain and get the international attention to
focus on the now defunct Football4U and on its director: me. I was
becoming way too popular for comfort so, as a precaution, I decided
to step down from my post as manager of Exclusive Sports and to
designate Mohamed Rais, the former referee turned taxi driver that I
had hired as one of my runners, in my stead.

A few days after the
Bahrain vs Togo match, I received a call from Mweetwa, one of the
Zambian boys from RoPS.

"On
September 22
^nd,
there is a Veikkausliiga match
between TPS and AC Oulu", he explained. "The Yobe brothers
are asking whether we can do business".

I packed my things
and hopped on a flight to Finland to meet the Yobe brothers before
the match.

"You have to
lose by 2-0", I told them. "If one of you takes a double
yellow, I think that the result will come naturally".

The Yobe brothers
agreed and I arranged for Dan to send a Bulgarian runner over with
the cash for them. I was probably the only Indian guy watching the
match in all of Finland; I sat in the stands shaking for the bitter
cold. Neither one of the Yobe brothers managed to be sent off the
pitch; one of them was actually substituted during the first half
but, by then, AC Oulu was already down by two goals. Then, with ten
minutes left in the match, they were losing by 5-0, so I whistled to
Mweetwa, who was sitting in the stands some distance away from me.

"Come
to the bathroom with one of
the
Yobes", I
told him.

The Yobe brother who
had been substituted joined me in the stadium's bathroom as Mweetwa
waited outside. Once inside, I gave him 50 thousand euro to share
with his brother. Then I gave Mweetwa five thousand for bringing the
Yobe brothers to me and Musonda two thousand for bringing Mweetwa
over. It was their commission.

Barely a week later,
in early October 2010, Exclusive Sports received an e-mail from a
Finnish club called FC PoPa.

"Hello",
said the message, "we are looking for a sponsor".

FC PoPa was a club
that played in the Ykkonen league, the Finnish second division, and
was run by a former football player called Antti. I reckoned that the
FC Haka Managing Director, Juha, to whom I had proposed the
sponsorship deal first, must have spread the word. I decided to keep
PoPa on hold for the moment and sent them an e-mail saying as much.
Then I followed up on my sponsorship proposal with FC Haka. I called
Juha and asked him whether his club's management had accepted my
offer. Juha replied that the board had rejected both the sponsorship
deal and our proposal to provide players for their lineup.

"There is
something very wrong with this proposal", the board had
objected.

Juha also informed
me that he had decided to resign from his post.

After
speaking to Juha, I called the Tampere United management to figure
out where they stood on the proposal. Tampere was in dire need
of
cash; their financial situation was
disastrous and they seemed very interested, so I set up an
appointment with their CEO, Deniz, in Helsinki.

"How much money
can you give us?" was his first question.

"The entire
deal will be worth about one million euro", I replied.

"How soon can
you give us the money?" he continued.

"I can arrange
an advance payment of 300 thousand by November", I explained.

Deniz was agreeable.
He drew up a tentative contract saying that Exclusive Sports would
provide one million euro to sponsor Tampere United but, in the
meanwhile, had also sought information about my company.

"You are not
the director of Exclusive Sports", Deniz said. "The
director is a guy called Mohamed Rais. So if you want to go ahead
with the deal, Mohamed has to come here and sign this contract or
give you a power of attorney".

"I'll get the
power of attorney in no time", I reassured him.

As
the Finnish football season was drawing to a close, I was contacted
by a Kenyan footballer that I knew called George who gave me the
telephone contact of another Kenyan player called Willis. Willis was
one of Kenya's national team's goalkeeper and happened to play in
Finland for a first division club called IFK Mariehamn. I later found
out that
Willis
had started in the Kenya vs Nigeria
match that I had fixed in order to get Nigeria into the World Cup. I
rang him up.