Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (34 page)

"Dan", I
asked, "are you sending money to Beirut?"

We had a heated
argument, then Dan called Murugan.

"Why the fuck
did you tell Wilson that you were traveling to Lebanon?" he
thundered. "Go and carry that money now. You either work for me
or you work for him".

From
that day on, Murugan came to my side and Dan stopped using him as a
runner. He began employing a Chinese hair stylist called Choo, also
known as Mark, as his new runner. As Dan didn't have any close
friends in Singapore, Choo quickly became his closest pal. He was not
one of the brightest people I have met but if Dan told him, "sit
down", Choo would sit.
Choo
loved to gamble on horse races and Dan never failed to reprimand him
for it.

"Don't play
those fucking horses!".

Overall,
Choo
was a nice guy; he would go on and on talking about anything but, if
there was something he really knew nothing about, it was football.

Since
parting ways with Dan, I had sought another boss to continue doing
business. In late March 2009 I contacted Harry,
who
by then was not as powerful as he
used to be. In fact, he brought along three partners to our meeting
who could provide funding for my fixes. We met over coffee in
Singapore and exchanged some anecdotes. It was the very first time
that I met Harry in person. After some generic chatter, Harry brought
up the Sierra Leone match in which Dan had fucked him up and
suggested my involvement.

"Harry", I
said, "you and I have never seen each other before. The only
place I remember seeing you was in Queenstown remand prison but we
never spoke face to face. There has never been any rivalry between
us, so you tell me why the fuck would I have needed to double cross
you during the Merdeka Cup. You know who's responsible for your
loss".

"Dan Tan
mother-fucker", Harry quivered with rage, "I went down
below his block and asked him to come down. His wife was screaming:
'Don't go, don't go, don't go'. When Dan came out of the building I
grabbed his neck and wanted to wring it like a chicken's but his wife
kept screaming from her window so I eventually let him go".

Dan had fucked Harry
upside down but this had not prevented him from giving Harry a call
when in need.

"Dan called me
earlier today", Harry revealed. "He said: 'Hey, there is
this UC Albinoleffe match coming up. It's a 100 percent sure win'".

UC Albinoleffe was
playing in the Italian Serie B, the second division, and Harry had
enough credit to throw such a bet for Dan. I was surprised to hear
that Dan had made it to Italy. We were not working together anymore,
but still spoke occasionally and Dan had never mentioned the
circumstance to me. I know that there are certain things that are
supposed to remain business secrets. If I had an Italian Serie B game
on my hands, I would not share the information with anyone else.

"Did Dan ask
you to bet for him?" I asked Harry.

"Yeah", he
confirmed with a sour smile, "the fucker asked me to call for
300 thousand dollars".

"And what did
you tell him?"

"I said: 'Hey,
the maximum I can do for you is 100 thousand'".

In case of a win,
Harry could have fucked Dan up by refusing to pay him but it would
have meant that the information about fixed matches would have
stopped coming his way. This is the nature of our business: sometimes
you must be ready to swallow your ego in order to make money.

"I placed 300
thousand dollars on the Albinoleffe match", added Harry. "100
thousand for Dan and 200 thousand for myself".

The Albinoleffe
match was a life buoy for Dan and was the first of a series of games
that picked him back up to his old shine. Dan's European partners had
contributed to spread the word among the players in Italy.

"Hey, there is
this Chinese guy who can place huge bets".

Dan wasn't
manipulating the matches directly. The Italians arranged the fixes
among themselves then placed their wagers through Dan, who rode on
their tips. After the first Albinoleffe game, Dan's popularity grew
steadily. The word spread like wildfire, deeper and deeper, and the
Italians came in flocks. Dan moved to a villa in Slovenia and people
traveled there to meet him: players, match-fixers, gamblers. He just
sat there like a Chinese mafia boss.

"Can you place
bets for me?" they asked.

"Yes I can",
Dan answered. "How much money can you put on the table?"

"500 thousand".

"OK. But can
you give me a 3-0 result?"

"No, we can
give you 2-0".

"For 2-0 I will
not be able to bet that much", Dan would bargain. "I need
3-0 for that amount".

Dan was no betting
house, he was just a bridge to Asian gambling and would sell the
wagers on to other people like Harry or Ah Kang who could absorb
them. A betting house like Ah Kang's was able to place as much as two
million euros worth of bets. But the Italian players didn't know Ah
Kang so they had to go through Dan. All Dan would do was pick up the
telephone and place the bets, then he would send his runner to
distribute the winnings to the players. If you are a punter, you are
a punter, and here was a guy who could throw two million euros on a
match for you. Take Giuseppe Signori, for instance, the former SS
Lazie striker who was arrested by the Italian police. He had the
right contacts with players who were willing to gamble on their own
matches. If each of the players placed one hundred thousand euro on
the match and Signori placed an additional two to six hundred
thousand, Dan would throw three million dollars of his own money on
top of theirs. Not the first time around, of course, but if the
players were throwing their own money on their match, it was a
guarantee that the result would follow. And if the first match was
successful and the second one was too, why worry about the third? It
was just going to happen.

You
might be wondering why Italian players trusted an anonymous Chinese
guy with that much money. We're talking hundreds of thousands of euro
so, will you trust someone with it or not? If one can gradually build
that trust and deliver, then why should they look for another guy? In
Singapore alone there were over 20 individuals
who
could do what Dan was doing, but the
Italians didn't know them, they only knew Dan Tan. And he began
making millions without even having to pay corruption money; Dan had
started building his empire on rock-solid foundations.

International
friendly matches do not affect a team's FIFA ranking unless they are
played on FIFA international match calendar dates; if they aren't,
they don't count. These friendly games are the product of an
agreement between two associations affiliated to FIFA or of the
mediation of a FIFA match agent. The best thing about international
friendlies is that, save for the final score, nobody reports to FIFA
what happens on the pitch. Unless it's an official fixture, such as a
World Cup qualifier, there is no match commissioner appointed by
FIFA, UEFA, AFC, CAF or by any other continental football governing
body to evaluate the performance of the referee, give him a grade and
file a report.
The
match commissioner is the most powerful man in a football game. He
has the power to call off a match if he finds the security to be
inadequate, the conditions of the pitch to be unsatisfactory or any
other natural cause to hinder the regular unfolding of a game.

I
happened to be sitting in the office of the Bahrain FA General
Secretary once as he was busy assessing the performance of a
Singaporean referee. The match had taken place on the previous day
and the General Secretary, who was the designated match commissioner
for the fixture, was scrutinizing the recording of the game like a
vulture. Every five minutes he would evaluate the ref's performance,
then, after the end of the match, he filed his report.
Fortunately
for me,
i
t
is very rare for two FAs to engage the services of a match
commissioner for an international friendly.

Bookmakers
are usually keen to offer bets for international friendlies; betting
companies are profit-oriented businesses and will bring up as many
games as they possibly can on their websites to attract punters. All
matches played in Europe and North America are customarily available
for gambling, as are a good portion of those played in Africa, Asia
and Latin America. Since all league activity is suspended during
international FIFA calendar days, the only revenue for gambling
companies on those dates is represented by international fixtures.
Gambling companies want the turnover and the revenue. If they decide
to offer betting on a particular fixture, they don't care to know who
plays who; if monkey plays monkey, they will open up the odds on
which monkey is going to win. But organizing an international
friendly game or tournament and picking the right monkeys to play in
it is no simple matter; there are plenty of hurdles to clear.

This is how I
usually go about arranging an international friendly match: first, I
contact the person in charge of a host country's national team or
their FA's General Secretary.

"Do you need a
sparring partner?" I ask. "I can take care of that. I will
pay the bills, fly the team over for you and take care of their
accommodation".

In normal
circumstances, when an FA invites another country's national team for
an international friendly, they will have to bear the airfare,
accommodation and appearance fee for that team; an amount that can
vary depending on the teams involved. If they bring Brazil and
Germany to Dubai for an international friendly, the host FA must be
prepared to dish out at least two million dollars in appearance fees
alone. That is why FAs are usually so pleased with my offer and don't
bother to ask how I will profit from the venture. If they do, I have
a rock-solid cover story prepared ahead of time to offer them.

Once
you've landed a deal with the FA, you
need
to buy 30 airline tickets for the visiting team and the rest of the
delegates. If you're working with Africans your hardships will
increase exponentially. Africans work like snails; they have a
tendency to take their own sweet time to provide a team list, then
they'll call you and they'll want to change three or four of the
names on it. Usually this happens after you think that you have
everything settled.
The average
cost for flying a national team from Africa to Asia is roughly 50 to
70 thousand US dollars. Accommodation usually costs anywhere from 10
to 15 thousand but host FAs are often willing to provide full board
and housing for the visiting team.

In addition to the
logistical expenses there is the appearance fee which, in my case, is
in the form of corruption money; it costs anywhere from 50 to 80
thousand US dollars per match to get a team to dance to my tune. In
some cases, t
hey'll
ask me to provide ridiculous additional fees, even for the younger
age-group matches. This money will go to the players and officials
who need to buy telephone cards and run other improbable
miscellaneous errands. There will be no end to the people that you
need to appease. I've witnessed teams refuse to step on the pitch
before being paid their fee. The money that I offer to the visiting
side represents a handsome profit in a country like Zimbabwe, for
example, which has no real currency of its own. Robert Mugabe has
completely destroyed the nation, snatching land from investors and
chasing white residents out. Any amount of US dollars will turn heads
and buy questionless collaboration in a country like that.

After
you get the show on stage, on the day of the match, you'll be praying
that the books will open for your game because, if they don't, you'll
lose your capital. The whole process is a massive headache but, in
the end, if the business goes as planned, it is well worth the
effort.
All in all, organizing a
friendly international match costs roughly one to two hundred
thousand US dollars and can raise revenue for up to 400 thousand US
dollars. If you do your math, you'll see that you can walk away with
about 200 thousand US dollars in profits from a single international
friendly match. If you use a betting house or a senior master agent
to expand the volumes of your wagers, the profits increase
exponentially.