Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (45 page)

Dan hadn't invited
me to his New Year's celebration dinner with Admir, Dino and Kosta.
After saying hello to them at their hotel, I went home; I was not a
shareholder of the syndicate and could not mingle freely with Dan's
associates.

Two days later,
Zimbabwe was set to play against Syria in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
This time around the Zimbabweans were creating problems. One of the
officers who was accompanying the team called me to voice his
complaints.

"Hey
Wilson", he informed
me
,
"the boys don't want to take the field. They want to see some
money first".

"Fuck you
guys!" I was sick of their continuous requests. "You fucked
up the whole thing against Thailand and now you don't want to play
without getting paid beforehand? You play your match first, then I
will pay you".

"No", he
insisted, "we want to see the money first".

"OK", I
told him, "I will give you guys a 30 thousand dollar advance.
You go out there and lose by four goals. And I don't want another
fuck up".

I took my car, drove
up to Kuala Lumpur and gave the Zimbabweans the 30 thousand dollars;
then I sat on their bench during the match. After Syria scored their
fourth goal, I walked out of the stadium, as my presence wasn't
required anymore. Zimbabwe lost 6-0, they were literally walking on
the field. I arranged for another 20 thousand dollars to be delivered
to the team at the airport before they flew back home.

While I was busy in
Malaysia, Rajendra Prasad had suddenly turned entrepreneurial. He
teamed up with another runner of mine called Manimaran and decided
that they would compete against me in Syria. They couldn't figure out
how I had managed to squeeze a healthy weekly profit from the Syrian
league; they had no idea of what I had gone through in order to be
successful there.

Sometime earlier I
had sent Manimaran to Jordan to settle the payment for a Syrian
goalkeeper. During his stay in Jordan, Manimaran had managed to
approach a black player from Tishreen SC, a Syrian club from the town
of Latakia. Manimaran had made some progress with the footballer and
had arranged to meet him for business in Syria. The player claimed
that he could convince his fellow teammates so, without informing me,
Manimaran and Rajendra Prasad flew to Syria on their own to meet the
other players.

"Would you like
to do business with us?" Rajendra Prasad and Manimaran asked.
"Don't worry, we are reliable. We know this guy Samir and have
players in hand from Al Wahda, whom you'll be playing against in your
next match. Why don't we organize something for that game? You'll get
your three points, guaranteed".

Rajendra
Prasad and Manimaran were
using
the name of Al Wahda, a team which
they knew was in business with me, and the one of my fixer Samir
because he was very popular among local footballers, especially those
from Tishreen. It hadn't occurred to me that they could try to take
over my business in Syria until I received a call from Samir himself.

"Wilson",
he seemed angered, "did you send somebody to the Tishreen
football club without telling me? Are you doing business behind my
back?"

"Fuck, of
course not", I replied. "I have no idea what you're talking
about. You know that I don't do that kind of shit".

Samir knew that
during the previous season I had briefly done business with the
president of Tishreen. At that point the club was dangerously close
to relegation and had a home match coming up against al-Nawair,
another local club from the city of Hama, also on the take with me.
Samir informed the president of Tishreen that I had enough influence
over the al-Nawair players to dictate a result and the president
asked to meet with me. I was in Syria at the time so I agreed.

"Can you help
me?" he inquired.

"What is it
that you want from me?" I asked.

"Can you help
us get the three points against al-Nawair when they come here to play
against us?"

"No problem",
I said, "you'll have your three points. I can do that for you.
But in the next season, when you play al-Nawair, if you are not
fighting relegation, can you return the favor? If you are struggling
to stay up in the league I will not disturb you, but if you are
safe…"

"Sure", he
smiled. "If we are still in the top league, I'll gladly return
the favor".

I
kept my promise and on May 8
^th
,
2009, Tishreen thrashed al-Nawair 5-1 at home and got the three
points. Ah Kang and I wagered on the match and made some money; we
were still in business together at the time. I didn't ask any money
of the Tishreen president for the fix and paid off the al-Nawair
players from my own pocket.

Then, during the
following season, Tishreen went to play away to al-Nawair in November
2009. They were safe from relegation and honored their promise. Both
teams worked to give me the four goals that I wanted and the game
ended 2-2. Before the match kicked off, I had even given Dan a call.

"Hey Dan",
I had said, "we've got a free game coming up. We don't need to
pay the cost of the players; it's a payback match".

I had tipped him off
and had pitched in some money for myself.

Tishreen was, of
course, well aware of what my line of business was, so when Rajendra
Prasad and Manimaran showed up, everybody, from the president to the
bottom-most guy, already knew everything that there was to know about
match-fixing. The footballers reported Rajendra Prasad's and
Manimaran's approach to the coach, who must have thought: "Hey,
somebody is eating on my table". The coach reckoned that Samir
must be involved and rang him up.

"Hey Samir",
he asked, "are you still doing business with my team?"

And Samir called me.

"Hey Wilson,
are you fucked? Did you send somebody behind my back?"

"No, man",
I reassured him, "I told you that I don't do that kind of shit.
If I want something, I'll come and speak to you".

"Listen",
Samir insisted, "there are two guys from Singapore with the
Tishreen footballers. The players asked me if you know who these guys
are. If you don't, Tishreen is going to call the police. What should
I do?"

"OK, let me
check".

I immediately called
Sivarajan, who was in touch with Rajendra Prasad.

"Siva, has
anyone gone to Syria?" I asked him. "They could be in big
trouble. I need to know now".

"Rajendra
Prasad and Manimaran could have gone there", Sivarajan replied.

I rang Samir back to
inform him: "I may know the two guys that went to Tishreen but I
did not send them over".

"Tishreen wants
to call the police", said Samir. "You get your men to fuck
off from there now".

I relayed the
message to Sivarajan.

"You know
what?" I told him. "You call these guys now and tell them
to get the fuck out of the hotel asap. Tishreen are going to report
them to the police".

Sivarajan called
Rajendra Prasad and passed the information to him, but Rajendra
Prasad thought that we were pulling his leg.

"Ah, ah",
he cracked up, "you're just fucking around with me. You want to
scare me or what? The players all agreed and now you come and tell me
that the police is after us? Give me a break".

When Rajendra Prasad
and Manimaran went to meet the players for the second time, the room
was rigged; there were microphones and a hidden camera recording
their every move. The police ambushed the two dumb fuckers and took
them away. Their faces were paraded all over Syrian TV. Rajendra
Prasad's brother, BJ, came to me asking for help. BJ was a nice chap;
I had loaded 500 thousand Singapore dollars on his on-line gambling
account so that I could use it to place my bets and he had never
stolen a single penny from me.

"Look", I
told BJ, "the entire nation of Syria knows about the case. It's
all over the papers and on television. No fucker wants to be
associated with these guys at this point in time".

I then arranged for
two friends of mine to accompany Rajendra Prasad's wife to Syria in
order to locate her husband's whereabouts and figure out what exactly
was going on with his case, but the Syrians were unwilling to divulge
any details about him and Manimaran.

Rajendra Prasad
finally made it back home after spending five months in Syrian
prisons. He ended up paying 100 thousand US dollars to unlock the
prison's doors, get out and return to Singapore penniless. On the
week following Rajendra Prasad's release, Manimaran was also let go;
they both agreed that those had been the worst five months of their
entire life. Because of their recklessness, the two fuckers had
destroyed my business in Syria. From then on, everyone was aware of
what match-fixing was all about and the Syrian players were too
afraid to continue dealing with me.

Licking pussy was,
until very recently, illegal in Singapore, as was anal sex. According
to Section 377 of the Penal Code, which was amended in 2007, they
were against the law. If a woman complained that you licked her
pussy, you would get arrested. If she didn't complain, it was fine
and you could try your luck again the next time you met her. But if
you didn't do it well, it could become a violation. When you told
people that anal and oral sex were prohibited in Singapore they
laughed at you. We were a developed society but some of our laws were
really in need of some healthy amending.

"Mother-fuckers",
I used to explain, "all of these Chief Justice are 60 years old
and above and have never licked a pussy in their entire life. How the
fuck are they going to know anything?"

In mid-January 2010,
about a week before my court session for the incident at the Changi
airport, Murugan and I left Singapore and flew to Angola for the
Africa Cup of Nations; I was still allowed to travel abroad with the
prior consent of the Singaporean authorities so I made the most of
it. Luanda was nuts; the most expensive city that I have ever been
to. A single night at the Hilton cost a whopping 600 US dollars; a
buffet for two another 100 US dollars. Angola was the very first
African country where I saw Ferrari and Porsche showrooms exposing
their luxury goods to the indigent, hapless population. If you want
to open a restaurant in Africa, I suggest you go to Angola; if you
want to go for a holiday, go elsewhere.

My plan for the
Africa Cup of Nations followed the usual scheme: target the teams
that are out of contention and fix their last group stage matches. My
first victim was Malawi. I had traveled to its capital Lilongwe in
September 2009 for their World Cup qualifier against Guinea and had
made some friends among the Malawian players. Malawi had lost its
first two matches against Algeria and Angola and had nothing left to
play for when they faced Mali for their last group stage game in the
north-western Angolan exclave of Cabinda. I managed to bring a few
Malawian footballers to my side and they granted me a 3-1 loss
against the Malians.

While I was in
Angola, Danny and Anthony were in Thailand to supervise the matches
of the King's Cup because we had managed to send a number of African
referees there to officiate the fixtures. I was sharing the business
in Thailand with Harry and was using him to place my bets on the
Africa Cup of Nations in Angola but, after the first Malawi game, I
noticed that Harry was fucking around with my on-line betting
account. I suspected that he was lying to me about the amounts that
he wagered and that he was attempting to transfer all of his losses
from his account to mine. I decided to give heed to my intuition and
dropped Harry to try to do business with Dan again.

My
next targets were to be Benin and Mozambique. Both teams had lost one
match and drawn the head-on clash against one another. They were set
to play their last group stage matches on the same day: Benin was to
face Egypt, while Mozambique challenged Nigeria. Since I had obtained
the contacts
to
some of the Beninese players through
some Togolese acquaintances of mine, I called Dan for a formal
proposal.

"Dan, I don't
have enough money left on me", I said to him, "I need more
to pay the Benin players. Are any of your runners available to fly
over to Angola and deliver the cash to them?"