Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (59 page)

"Latvia vs
Bolivia, the referee is a Bosnian guy", said Murugan. "Estonia
vs Bulgaria has a Hungarian referee, Lengyel. But no one knows where
the second match will be played".

I knew it. The
Bosnian match official was the same referee that I had used in
Bahrain vs Iran in 2009 while Lengyel was the same official that we
had designated for that dreadful Argentina vs Bolivia match. Both
were Dan's men.

"OK, Murugan",
I explained, "just go to the stadium, sit in a corner and don't
show your face".

I was ready to bet
on the first match, Bolivia vs Latvia. What would Dan ask? Over 2.5?
Over 3.5? I knew that, despite his threats, Dan would never go for
Under. I had found a financier to place my bets because I was
temporarily short on currency. I knew that Dan was capable of
completing all of his betting before the game even started; the job
was already done on his side.

As
Bolivia vs Latvia kicked off, punters in Singapore were hitting so
hard on the match that the odds were rapidly shrinking. I cursed
Sivarajan and his big mouth. I decided to bet on four goals scored.
The progression of the match was unusual, even for Dan's standard;
the goals were coming too quickly; one penalty, two penalties, three
penalties; by the 60
^th
minute the score was already 2-1 and
there was still a long way to go. I expected at least one more goal
which never came and I lost my money. Hoping to recover from the loss
in the second match, Estonia vs Bulgaria, I called Murugan.

"Locate one
more stadium. There is a second match, Estonia vs Bulgaria, one more
match somewhere in Antalya today".

"No boss",
replied Murugan, "nobody here knows where the second match will
be played".

The
second game was going to be played on the same fucking pitch as the
first, only an hour later. At times I am amazed at my own people's
lack of intelligence. We didn't bet on the second match, which ended
2-2, four penalties, four goals, Over 3.5. Dan's two refs had awarded
a total of seven penalties in a single fucking day.

I
later had the chance to obtain information on a telephone
conversation between Dan and Zeekay that had occurred before the
matches. During the chat, Dan had told Zeekay that he had inside
information about UEFA doubting the regularity of the Antalya games
before they had even kicked off. He then went on to explain to Zeekay
that he was thinking of calling the operation off and placing Turkish
referees to officiate the matches. Instead, he went on with his plan
and told his refs to award rapid-fire penalties. It was as if you see
the police waiting for you in front of a bank and you still try to go
ahead and rob it. Fucking stupid. Had I been in control, I would have
probably told the refs to wave a double yellow and send off a player
in each match. It would have minimized the burden on my match
officials, protected their interest and avoided the sudden
destruction of their careers. I would have settled for 0-0 in the
first half and a couple of goals in the second. It may not be as
profitable as four goals; so be it, it's a business loss. But Dan was
too fucking stubborn to change his plans and went ahead with his
decision to go Over on both matches.

In
the conversation between Dan and Zeekay, Dan had proceded to blame me
for UEFA taking notice of the games, claiming that I was responsible
for tipping them off.

"Wilson
is the only one who knows Anthony's company's name, Footy Media
International", claimed Dan.

At
the time when the matches were played, I had no clue that Dan was
using Anthony's company to organize the fixtures. To spill the beans
on Anthony would have brought unnecessary attention to match-fixing,
my bowl of rice, and I don't spit where I eat. If I had wanted to
harm Anthony, I would have personally traveled to Antalya with my
trademark hockey stick and confronted the fucker face to face.

To
say the truth, I
believe
that the matches in Antalya came under scrutiny before they were
played because Dan and the others had acted carelessly; not
professionally enough. They had paid money to Estonia or Latvia and
there were no press meetings whatsoever before the games; this arose
UEFA's suspicions. But Dan was blind to it all and was telling people
that I had betrayed them; the word had gotten out and everyone was
looking for me.

"Where
is Wilson Raj?"

Then,
for some unfathomable reason, Dan decided to treat me like one of his
shareholders and gave me 200 thousand dollars for the Antalya
matches; perhaps he wanted to keep me tranquil until he had a chance
to drive his knife into my back.

By
early February 2011, the Tampere United CEO Deniz,
who
had already received 300 thousand
dollars as part of our sponsorship agreement, was desperate and
pressuring me to discuss the future of his team. He wanted the rest
of the money and needed the players that we had promised as soon as
possible, but neither were coming his way. His calls had become more
and more insistent, so I decided to call Dan to discuss the matter.

"Dan", I
said, "Tampere is chasing us for the players and we've got none.
Where the fuck are the footballers that you promised?"

Tampere wanted young
promising Africans that they could mold into real players then sell
for a profit in Europe. I had already sent Tampere a few CVs and they
had agreed to let my boys come in for a trial but Dan had disapproved
of my plan.

"No", he
had objected, "no African players. They are too difficult. Once
they get to Europe they will be more keen to play football than to do
business with us".

I believe that Dan
didn't want Tampere to field players picked by me because, if they
had, I would have been calling the shots with them.

"We bring in
good players and there will be no questions asked", I insisted
with Dan. "If you don't want Africans, we can buy European
players for 100 thousand euro or so from Slovakia, Slovenia or
Serbia. You spend one or two hundred thousand and you'll get very
good players; they'll be assets in your hands. Give them a 3-year
contract and pay them a salary of 20 thousand euro per month and they
will dance to your tune. Finnish football is so fucked up, their
national sport is ice hockey. If we get the right players, two
defenders to do the dirty job at the back and four attacking players
to do the clean job in the front, we need not worry anymore. All we
have to do is tell them: 'Give me four goals, you can score or you
can concede. Go and get the job done'. So Dan, what do you say?"

After much
insistence, Dan and Zeekay managed to send two Hungarian players to
Finland. I don't know what clubs they came from. One was a defender
called Gabor who was quite young, 23 or 24; the other guy was not so
young, he was 32 years old.

"Who are these
players?" asked the Tampere management when they saw them. "We
don't know anything about them, you never even gave us their CVs. We
didn't say whether we wanted them or not; you just chucked them in
like that. We are a professional club, we need to know the players
that we employ. We cannot accept these guys. Moreover, we definitely
don't want footballers who are already 32 years old".

The
Finns
were very cunning. If someone offers
your sinking club one million euro, you should give them some leeway.
These guys, instead, were fucking desperate for money but didn't want
to give us their cooperation. Nevertheless, after some persuasion,
they finally accepted to give our players a chance to train with
their team for three days. Gabor was a good footballer; he
immediately displayed his ability and the coach took a liking
to
him from the first day of training.

"This is the
kind of player that we want to sign", he said. "The other
guy, the 32 year-old, we have no interest in him. You can send him
home".

Seeing that Tampere
United had accepted only one of the players, Dan sent a Brazilian guy
who had played in Vasco da Gama over to have him tested. The guy was
total rubbish; another hopeless footballer.

I called Dan again.

"Hey Dan",
I said, "this Brazilian guy you sent over doesn't fit into the
team".

"But he played
in Vasco da Gama", argued Dan.

"Dan", I
said, "the guy played in Vasco da Gama five years ago, not
yesterday. He is just not good enough".

"We're giving
these guys 1.5 million", Dan shouted into the receiver. "Why
can't my player make it into their team?"

Dan thought that,
since he was forking out the cash, he could play in goal and Zeekay
could play defense. He behaved as if he were dealing with Malaysia,
where you can just pump money into a club and run the show as if the
club was your own.

"Dan", I
answered calmly, "you're paying them 1.5 million but it doesn't
mean that you can put a monkey into their lineup. This is Europe.
There is a certain degree of professionalism being exercised here. If
you want to insert your players, you have to do it by the book. Out
of your three footballers, the only one that they want is Gabor".

I cannot blame
Tampere for being selective. When they saw that Gabor's skills were
fitting, they did not reject him and signed him on at once. All we
needed were moderately skilled players.

"Why don't you
go to FC Nitra in Slovakia or in some Slovenian club where you have
connections and get some footballers?" I suggested to Dan. "We
can take them out on loan if you don't want to buy them".

The really sad part
of the whole deal was that we ended up having frictions with the
Tampere United management because we did not have the right players
for them, not because of our shady sponsorship offer. Except for
Gabor, Tampere didn't even want to take our players along to their
training sessions anymore and refused to field them during the
February warm-up friendly matches that they played before the start
of the season.

"You are not
fulfilling your promise", accused Deniz. "You were supposed
to bring in young players whom we were supposed to sell for a profit.
One of them is 32 years old. How are we going to profit from signing
him?"

I wondered why Dan
was struggling to find a few decent players to send over to Finland.
Negotiations with Tampere had been ongoing for nearly five months and
this fucker could not come up with five guys that could perform as
they were told. If Dan had told me that he had no players, I would
have looked for some myself. Had he allowed me to be the only cook, I
could have easily formed the team, but too many cooks started to come
into the kitchen and the soup got fucked up.

Around that time, I
received another disturbing telephone call from an Indian friend in
Singapore, a safe guy that I knew well.

"Hey Wilson",
he inquired, "are you using the passport of Raja Morgan
Chelliah?"

I was surprised;
nobody knew the name that I used while traveling in Europe.

"Who told you
that?" I asked.

"The word is
out that you are using that name", he replied.

It was the second
warning that I received in less than two months and I wondered who
could have leaked the information.

Meanwhile, back in
Singapore, Mohamed Rais had finished the 20 thousand euro that I had
given him to keep his mouth shut on the Tampere deal and had started
to sing another song.

"Boss, I have a
problem", he cried to Dan. "Can you give me 20 thousand?"

Dan gave him 20
thousand dollars.

"Look boss",
continued a grateful Rais, "Wilson is doing something behind
your back in Finland. Part of the money you gave him for the Tampere
United deal is going elsewhere".

Dan had already
sensed that something was amiss and, after Rais' revelations, he was
certain that I was fucking him up so he decided to send Zeekay to
Finland to check on me. I found out about it when I was in London,
only three days before Zeekay's arrival. Immediately, I flew to
Helsinki and met Tampere's CEO, Deniz, and their chairman, Harri, at
the Holiday Inn hotel. I booked a meeting room and ordered lunch for
the three of us.

"Look here",
I said to them, "I have to be frank with you. I'm just a
mediator, a go-between; I am an agent that wants to make a
commission. This is my profession: I get you the investor and you
give me my cut. Exclusive Sports isn't financing you directly; the
money is actually coming from an anonymous financier who loves
football. He is giving us a sponsorship of 1.5 million euro; 900
thousand goes to you and 600 thousand goes to me. Do you understand?
So when the European representative from Exclusive Sports comes here,
you must tell him that you already received 600 thousand euro, not
300 thousand. If you are agreeable, we can go ahead with this deal.
What do you say?"