Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (7 page)

The second Pal saw
me, he landed a punch in my stomach.

"Fuck", he
hissed. "Why aren't you paying up your lost bet?"

"I didn't know
that I placed my bet with you", I moaned, "if I had known,
I wouldn't have placed it".

Pal was about six or
seven years older than I was. He was small, wore a mustache and was
quite aggressive. In other circumstances, if I had been given a
one-on-one chance against Pal, I would have beat him so badly as to
make him forget his own name, but he was a gangster and I a nobody;
he had a lot of people around him and a lot of money in his pockets.
He had loads of money and all the Chinese guys around him sucking his
dick.

"Boss, boss,
boss".

I didn't want to
aggravate my situation; I had to use my words carefully.

"How do we
solve this issue?" growled Pal. "How are you going to
settle your debt?"

"Give me a
month", I said, "I'll settle the debt".

Pal agreed to give
me a month's break and one of his bouncers escorted me to the door.
As promised, I settled the debt with Pal's friend Raja within a
month's time and the incident was considered closed. I didn't have a
big ego and I was young; Pal was older than me and was a
renowned
match-fixer, he wasn't somebody with whom you would go
on a head-on collision with. Pal had come out of prison, where he had
spent three years for taking part in a clash between two gangs,
sometime in late 1989. He belonged to the Ang Soon Tong gang, one of
Singapore's trade groups, or triads.

There are many trade
groups in Singapore. There is Ang Soon Tong, Sio Yi Ho, Hai Lok San,
Salakau, San Kongsi; all of them are associated with Chinese triads.
These gangs then branch out and take in the Indians and the
Malaysians as well in sub-gangs. To be admitted into one of these
gangs you have to show how bold you are by fighting against another
fellow member of the triad. These trade groups organize functions
during the Chinese Ghost Festival where all of their members call
each other 'brother'. Some of the triad members have special tattoos:
the
tiger, for instance, belongs to Lok Huan. Each triad
also has a number that distinguishes it from the others, Lok Huan is
24; Salakau is 369; one can call them Trade group 24, Trade group 369
and so on. Singapore is geographically divided among these triads.
Yishun, where Pal lived, is Ang Soon Tong area; Hougang is also Ang
Soon Tong; the old airport road behind Geylang is Salakau area;
Geylang, the red light district, is split up among the different
trade groups. The triads profit from the proceeds of prostitution,
pornographic DVDs, drugs and dice gambling. If you want to walk into
a neighborhood and do business, you have to seek consent from the
block's trade group first. They aren't violent gangs like the ones in
Mexico or Colombia but you don't want to breach certain rules. If a
street is controlled by Ang Soon Tong and you want to go there and do
business, that's where they sit, you go and speak to them.

"You want to
take over?" they'll ask. "You come and clash with us".

After a clash, the
victorious group will rule over the newly conquered territory.

Gang members are
hard to understand; their younger affiliates will often just loiter
around town looking for trouble. If you happen to cross their gaze,
they'll say: "Why are you staring at me?"

This usually happens
when the potential victim is outnumbered and, shortly thereafter,
someone will often end up being slashed or stabbed for such a futile
,
inadequate motive.
The neighborhood where
I lived was split among two trade groups but I never cared to join
either; I rejected the principle of violence, bullying, and didn't
see how ten guys beating up on a loner could call themselves
gangsters. At times we would be dancing in a nightclub and someone
would shout: "Po!"

"Po" is a
way to call out the name of your triad. But if you happen to do it in
the presence of members of other gangs, it is deemed an insult; a
disrespectful slogan, and my gang is no lesser than your gang, so
fights would break out. At times, gang members even killed one
another for such stupid reasons. There were frequent gang clashes in
Jurong, western Singapore; very violent battles with weapons and
such.
Pal was involved in one of these riots between the black
gang and the red gang, two Indian sub-sections of Chinese trade
groups.

When there is a gang
clash in Singapore and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID)
cannot identify those directly involved, they will pick up the
head-men and some members of each group and just throw them in jail
without a trial. It's called Section 55 and it can be applied to both
gangsterism and drug-related offenses. The police will nab a few gang
members and get them to testify that you are a member of their trade
group, then they can lock you up without a trial for five to seven
years. This law is still applied in Singapore, which is nonetheless
considered to be a democratic country. Pal was in Section 55 for
three years. Only three years; lucky bastard.

Pal was born a
gambler. When he was detained, gambling was already rife within the
prison walls; it was the only way to kill time and Pal actively took
part in it. The stake in jail was usually tobacco or cash. When you
lost, if you paid your debt inside, the amount you owed would remain
unchanged; but if your debt was settled outside, you would have to
pay three times the amount lost. Prisons often assemble sports teams
and organize competitions between the different prison halls. Pal
used to bribe the players in the basketball teams and Sepak Takraw
teams in order to win his bets. Sepak Takraw is a three-man game that
is very popular among Malaysians; it's like a mix of football and
tennis. Football gambling was also a common pass-time in jail, as I
found out myself when I was locked up.

I
was told that when Pal came out in 1989, he struck a huge win with
the 4D: four digits.
In Singapore, 4D's
are very popular; they're much like the lottery: you pick four
numbers and, if they are drawn, you win. The weekly 4D weekend draws
attract long
queues
of gamblers outside the Singapore Pools lottery shops.
But Singapore Pools are not the only ones that sell 4D tickets. The
Chinese bookmakers have always put up a stiff competition against the
legal gambling industry and offered their own, illegal, 4D lottery.
The only difference between the two is that the Chinese will pay your
win on the same night, while the State-licensed companies will wait
until the following day and will issue a check for any win above ten
thousand Singapore dollars. After he was released from prison, Pal
apparently bought a lot of illegal 4Ds and struck a
one-million-dollar jackpot. His pockets bulging with cash, Pal
thought: "Fuck. I can execute the same match-fixing that I did
in prison in the Malaysia Cup".

Certain Malaysian
state teams had plenty of Indian guys in their lineups. Somehow Pal
managed to find one or two Indian international players who could
help him and began fixing their matches. With the help of these
players, he slowly began knitting a network of Indian footballers
throughout all of Malaysia. The Indian players brought in their
Malaysian colleagues,
who
in turn brought in the Chinese; soon Pal had an empire
at his feet and, by the year 1992, was able to control as many as 10
out of the 14 Malaysian state teams playing in the cup. In some of
these teams, Pal controlled as many as 11 players at once. His
success was due in large part to the huge amounts of money that he
offered to his players. It was an unprecedented phenomenon in the
Malaysia Cup and Pal soon managed to wipe away all of his
competitors; no one was able to match his quota.

In those days, the
Chinese guys who fixed matches would bet two to three hundred
thousand Singapore dollars tops on a single game, while Pal was
betting 1 to 1.5 million dollars per match. While the other fixers
were afraid that,
if
they incurred a significant loss, they would have never
been able to recover, Pal trusted his players and bought their
loyalty with handsome presents. Soon he could boast total control
over players, referees and officials; everyone hanged
on
his lips. His bets were so large that they would alter
the odds: if the odds were one-ball and Pal decided to give, they
would increase to five-ball. Then, if he was collecting the wager
from the five-ball, the odds would drop back down to one. It was
total havoc.

In those years we
never placed our bets in China but the wagers were nonetheless all
managed by Chinese agents; everything related to gambling was
absorbed by them. Malaysia was just a phone call away and in
Singapore there were plenty of Chinese runners, trustworthy runners,
who could absorb three million dollars within an hour. You just
needed to call them: "Bet for me".

These Chinese
runners went by the names of Ah Blur, Ah Swuey, Ah Lim, Ah Tong, Ah
Chai. Their names were actually Blur, Swuey, Lim and so on, but the
Chinese in Singapore have the habit of pronouncing an 'Ah' in front
of their names or nicknames. These Chinese runners had places where
they could throw their bets; I don't know who the final collector of
the wagers was because there were a number of agents in Malaysia,
Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. Pal employed a myriad of
these Chinese runners; about 10-20 guys who worked under him, buying
and selling his bets. He was probably the first Indian boss who had
the Chinese bowing down before him. He was so powerful and so
confident that he would go so far as to organize what we called
'ghost games'.

"Selangor FA is
playing Johor FC", he would announce.

Asian betting
companies usually had a source in the local FA that told them which
matches were going to be played on what dates. Pal would bribe that
person to
publish
the Selangor vs Johor match among the
official fixtures of the day and inform the betting companies. After
being added to the FA's schedule, Pal's bogus match became official
and would pop up for betting among the daily fixtures. All he needed
to do now was to pay random amateur players to wear the Selangor and
Johor team jerseys and play. He used this trick a few times, until
the betting companies caught on.

Although he was
making millions, Pal still looked like a villager. The slippers on
his bare feet were always the first thing that one saw as he stepped
out of his green Mercedes 320, the biggest Mercedes-Benz in Singapore
at the time. Pal was originally from Sembawang, another rural area in
Singapore like Chua Chu Kang, where I was born. We were not born
rich, with the silver spoon and all
of
that
; we're not from royal or
distinguished families; we were all poor guys. The name Pal in Tamil
means 'milk'. When Pal was young, he rode through his neighborhood on
his bicycle selling milk from his parent's cows. That's why we were
never really into posh things like a villa with a swimming pool and a
bar counter; we were not into that way of life, nor did we ever
cherish any of those luxurious belongings; we were just gamblers. Pal
didn't have an education - I don't think that he ever went to school
- he spoke broken English and was not the kind of guy who could carry
himself very well. He was a chain smoker, his favorite brand was
Dunhill, and he would fuck all the women who worked for him. He had
no respect for others and was a big show-off: Pal would step into
your house and try to fuck your woman under your nose; he was that
kind of guy. Somebody told me that he has now become a Dato, an
honorary title that is bestowed upon respected figures in Malaysia;
something like an honorary doctorate degree.

"Doctor Pal",
I thought, when I first heard the news. "Fucking bastard, he
cannot recite the alphabet from A to Z and he's a doctor".

But Pal had a
Ph.D
when it came down to being street-smart. He had the
ability to convince people and, if need be, he had a very sweet
tongue.

When we first met,
Pal knew that I was fixing local matches because it was in the
market-talk. Besides the rigged games that I sometimes organized at
the Jalan Besar stadium, I fixed matches between company teams like
the Intercontinental Hotel vs
the
Hyatt Hotel and other such unimportant fixtures. These
were Inter-Hotel League games. If I happened to have some friends
working in one of the hotels that were competing, I would ask them to
assist me in approaching the players.

"Hey", I
would ask them. "Why don't you take money to lose the match
today".

"OK".

It wasn't
professional football and sometimes I could speak directly to the
managers of the teams and put my friends in their lineups. I remember
that once I was dead broke and one of these amateur matches was
coming up. I had watched one of the teams play and lose 5-0 against
another mediocre amateur squad. Early in the morning on the day of
the game I assembled some footballers that I knew and together we
went to speak to the team's manager.