Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (32 page)

"If you are so
pious", I often asked them, "why don't you donate half of
your money to the local mosque?"

These fuckers failed
to understand that Mubarak, Ben Ali, Khadafi and Assad's families
were getting richer by the minute and that they saw nothing 'haram'
about it. Fortunately, not all Muslim players are that pious; most
are willing to bend for cash just like the rest of us.

For match-fixers and
gamblers like myself, instead, money was just a number on the screen
of a betting website; a mere digit. Our humble beginnings and the
ease with which we won and lost our fortunes led us not to treasure
the wealth that we accumulated.

On
December 29
^th
Bahrain played their friendly match
against Syria in Manama. We tried to manipulate the game but things
didn't work out as planned. We didn't have enough players on our side
and no goalkeeper so we didn't follow up on the fix. The match ended
2-2.

After
the game I managed to be introduced to some influential members of
the Bahrain FA. I met their then-General Secretary Ahmed Jassim
who
introduced me to the all-powerful
Sheikh Ali bin Khalifa al Khalifa, the then-deputy chairman of the
Association and its current president. Of course neither of the two
was aware of my match-fixing activities; they were simply glad to
have found someone that could enlist foreign teams willing to play
against Bahrain.

"So long as
somebody comes here to play", they ingenuously admitted, "we
are happy".

We struck a deal:
invite, reciprocate, match. Easy. The rest would be up to me, from
the reservation of the visiting team's airline tickets to their
accommodation. My relationship with the Bahrain FA had commenced
wonderfully.

In early January
2009, Murugan and I flew to Doha, Qatar, where we were joined by Dan
for the Under-19 International Friendship Tournament. We approached
the Syrian Under-19 team and asked them to lose against Serbia but,
during the entire duration of the game, their coach was screaming
incessantly to his players from the sideline. Dan and I were seated
in the stands and watched on as the match ended in a goalless draw.

"How the fuck
are the Syrian boys supposed to lose a game if this fucker keeps on
screaming for the full 90 minutes?" complained Dan.

In
the stadium we met some Serbian team officials and Dan openly
discussed match-fixing with them. I reckoned that he had a very loose
tongue. Then, during
the
flight back to Singapore, Dan kept attracting the attention of the
stewardess by cracking silly jokes. He didn't behave like a boss at
all; he just wanted to have fun and be the center of attention. He
craved the spotlight like a child in a classroom. Dan was a pleasant
person to be with because he was a really jovial, nice guy but I also
sensed a darker side to him, one that was not visible at first
glance. After the initial spectacle offered to the smiling
stewardess, Dan and I began recollecting our common acquaintances
back home and the subject of Pal somehow came up. I relayed to Dan
what I had heard from Thana about the floodlight scam and the money
that Pal had allegedly lost on the 2001 Fenerbah
c
e
vs Barcelona UEFA Champions League match in Istanbul, Turkey.

"You
know this game, Fenerbah
c
e
vs Barcelona?" I asked. "I heard that it backfired on Pal
big-time".

Dan turned to face
me with a stern stare.

"Fuck you, Pal
did this game", he said fiercely. "I did this match. It was
me and two other Chinese guys. One of them, the one I was sharing the
business with, is now dead. Somebody killed him in Thailand because
he owed too much money to too many people".

All this while I had
thought it was Pal.

"I
got the floodlights idea from Bryan", continued Dan. "I
traveled to Turkey with a Chinese friend and together we contacted
another Chinese called Fu Chin who lived in Turkey and was married to
a Turkish woman; he helped us execute the scheme. Fu Chin had very
potent links in Moldova and Turkey and knew a high-ranking
official
in the Turkish
army
whom he co-opted to help us. It took a lot of planning: Fu Chin
surveyed the job and studied the teams' track records. No Spanish
club had ever won an official fixture on Turkish soil so we decided
to put our money on Fenerbah
c
e
to win the match. Fu Chin then got the Turkish army official to hire
a high-flier who would switch off the stadium's floodlights on
command. Everything was set and the odds were even but, by half-time,
Barcelona was ahead by two goals and was slated for certain victory.
At that point, we decided to kill the floodlights. I was hoping that,
by leaving everyone in the dark, the match would be declared null and
my bets void, but the whole thing blew up in my face".

"So you took
the loss?" I asked him.

"Yes. And a big
one. We didn't know that there was a generator in the stadium. The
lights were turned back on and the match was allowed to continue. The
Chinese guy that I had shared the business with was already indebted
and thought that he could solve his problems with that single fix,
instead, he was landed even deeper in debt. Unlucky mother-fucker;
the match destroyed him. He tried to hide from his creditors in
Thailand but they eventually found him and finished him off".

"The floodlight
scam was my idea, not Bryan's", I affirmed.

Dan remained silent
for a while.

"Rather throw a
grenade in the stadium", he finally said.

On
the following day Dan, Admir and I were off to Hanoi, Vietnam, where,
with the help of Fadi, we planned to rig an AFC Asian Cup
qualification match between Lebanon and Vietnam. Admir and the other
Europeans would come to Asia whenever there was business to be done.
They would stay in a hotel for a couple of days and would then fly
back to Europe. My relationship with Admir was still, "hi",
"bye", and, "how are things?"; there was never a
good chemistry between us and I was trying my level best to keep at a
distance from him because I didn't want to
incur
Dan's paranoia again.

While in Hanoi, we
arranged a meeting with the Lebanese players. We asked them for a
total of three goals; they agreed, delivered and Vietnam cruised 3-1
over Lebanon. Before returning to Singapore, we paid the Lebanese
players for the excellent performance and they informed us that they
would be traveling to Bangkok, Thailand, on the following week to
play in the Thai King's Cup. We agreed that we would meet them there
to do business together again.

Unlike Admir and
Dino, I didn't have a share in Dan's syndicate at the time and would
only receive a cut for the single matches that I fixed for them. Dan
was paying me 30 thousand dollars for each successful game. He and
the other syndicate members were betting and fixing games on their
own but didn't discuss the details thereof with me. I didn't care to
ask how much they wagered on the fixtures that I organized for them:
one million, two million; so long as they paid me my 30 thousand
dollar cut, I was fine. But I was not just an apple polisher; I hung
around with them and patiently waited for my turn to be the boss.
These fuckers didn't know that I had seen millions long before
meeting them. Unbeknownst to Dan and the rest of the lot, I used my
cut to throw some bets on the side. It wasn't much, usually between
30 and 50 thousand dollars; a sum small enough to avoid a shift in
the odds which would give away my underhanded activity.

This is how we grow:
we start from zero, then we take our 30 thousand dollar cut from the
first match and place it on the second one. Now, in addition to the
30 thousand cut from our second match, we'll have the winnings from
the 30 thousand that we gambled. We take that money and place it on
the following game and so on. All one needs to become his own boss
are four matches played right. But I had to be cautious; I couldn't
place 100 thousand dollars on a single match because it would have
altered the odds and ruined it for Dan and the others. If they
realized that information had been leaked and that their profits were
threatened, there was a good chance that they would call the game off
so I was limiting my betting and contenting myself with a healthy
side-profit. Whereas some match-fixers will sell the information on
the fixed matches to another party, I preferred to wager my own cash
on the side, because when you tip somebody off they will go to
another person and that person will go to another yet and so on. That
has always been the problem with Mega. He can't help but tip off
other punters.

"Why don't you
fucking go and make your own money", I kept telling him. "You
start with 30 or 40 thousand and grow slowly".

I had my mathematics
right but I never executed the scheme correctly myself; I'm a
gambler, just like Mega. If I have 90 thousand dollars, I will gamble
on other matches as well; not just on the fixed ones. When I punt, I
get carried away easily, then, when I'm losing, I have the tendency
to completely lose control of what I'm doing. Had I been disciplined,
by now I would be a multimillionaire with properties all over the
world. I could have easily made anywhere from 20 to 30 million
dollars.

While still in
Hanoi, I also set up a meeting with a group of Vietnamese
match-fixers that I had met during the 2008 Merdeka Cup in Malaysia.
They had a runner, a tall, skinny Vietnamese guy who went by the name
of Trung. Trung would come to the stadium with a camera, a tripod and
film the Merdeka Cup matches. I don't really know why he did that.
Trung knew that we were fixing matches so he would say "hello",
sit with us and shoot the breeze about match-fixing. Before he left
Malaysia we exchanged numbers and, when I traveled to Hanoi, I called
him and we scheduled a meeting with his boss at a local hotel. Trung
introduced me to a guy called Nguyen and to Nguyen's uncle, their
boss. Nguyen's group was already fixing matches in the local
Vietnamese league and wanted to build a relationship with us, which
they did. We agreed to meet again in Singapore at a later time to
discuss the possibility of doing business together.

About a week later,
towards the end of January 2009, the Lebanese national team traveled
to Thailand to play in the King's Cup. I arranged a short holiday in
Bangkok for Fadi and flew him over to instruct the Lebanese players.
Dan also flew in to oversee the business but the betting volumes for
the Thai King's Cup were so tiny that it wasn't worthwhile to execute
the fix. Since both Dan and Fadi were in Thailand, I arranged a
meeting between the two with the understanding that we could all
share the profit from our future business with Lebanon.

On the following
week, the Lebanese team was playing at home against Syria in another
AFC Asian Cup qualifier. Dan and I traveled to Beirut where we met
with the Lebanese players and asked them to throw the match.

"This is
delicate game", they objected. "Syria is a team that we
cannot lose to; they killed our Prime Minister".

Next, we tried to
convince the Syrian players to lose.

"No way",
they also snubbed our offer, "this is a life and death game for
us".

There was no margin
for fixing the match so I used the time in Beirut to follow up on my
relationship with the Syrian national team player that I had met in
Bahrain. We had exchanged some e-mails in the preceding days and he
had renewed his invitation to visit him in Syria. We met and I
introduced him to Dan before returning home.

When
in Singapore, Dan decided to approach Ah Kang, the Chinese man who
ran the betting house that had sparked the feud between
him
and Harry. Dan got a
Chinese-Singaporean friend of his called Ah Lam to call Ah Kang, who
flew in from mainland China to meet him. The two met at the Marina
Mandarin hotel in Singapore; I was present but sat at a different
table observing them from a distance. Ah Kang was a skinny Chinese
who only spoke Mandarin and Hokkien. He claimed that he could place
huge wagers in very little time but also noted that he would accept
Dan's bets only if the games were fixed.

"How much
credit do you need?" he asked Dan. "You just place your
order over the phone and I'll do the betting for you".