Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer (9 page)

"I have a
goalkeeper and a referee", I answered.

I made no mention of
Michal because we both knew when and how he had switched sides, but I
did bring Pal a Croatian goalkeeper called Sandro. Sandro had long
wavy hair down to his shoulders and no money in his pockets.

"Hey boss",
I said to Pal, "this guy needs money for a haircut".

"Mother-fucker",
he laughed. "You bring me somebody who doesn't have money to go
for a haircut and claims to be a footballer?"

Pal handed Sandro
five thousand dollars, then tried placing him in the Perak Football
Club, a Malaysian state team, but couldn't. Finally he managed to get
Sandro into the Singaporean club Woodlands Wellington FC and Sandro
became part of the family, as did I.

I also planned to
introduce Pal to a top Asian referee called Thiru, but, as I was
negotiating a match between Johor and Sarawak with him, Bryan
snatched the ref from me just like he had done with Michal. At that
time everybody wanted to impress Pal and be in his good books.

In 1993 I was
invited to Bryan's house for Diwali, a festival that Indians
celebrate between mid-October and mid-November of each year. On that
year, Diwali landed just two days ahead of the Malaysia Cup final and
Bryan had invited Pal, his boys and all the players that worked for
him to celebrate the recurrence at his place; Michal and Sandro were
also there. That night, Pal asked me to play poker with him, Bryan
and some of the other guys, so we began to be acquainted with
one-another slightly better; then our poker sessions moved from
Bryan's home to Pal's office and became a daily occurrence. At that
point we had gotten closer; not in the sense that we hugged and
kissed each other, but we knew one-another quite well. Bryan was the
best poker player among us: he had money and knew how to use it. He
would always raise the stake and you could not call unless you were
100 percent sure that you were going to nail the fucker. Pal and
Bryan never allowed the others to leave the poker table while ahead;
they always expected you to keep playing until you were back at
square one. On those rare days when I was winning, I would pretend to
count my money and secretly slip a couple of one thousand dollar
bills into my underwear; it was the only way to bring some money back
home. Both Pal and Bryan were very heavy, pathological gamblers; I
was nothing compared to them. Bryan had the balls to push one million
dollars on a single baccarat game. I've done the same on a football
match but would not dare do so in a game of cards.

In December 1993,
Pal smoothed the way for Kedah FA's victory in the Malaysia Cup by
fixing the cup's final against the Singapore Lions. He paid the Kedah
team handsomely to fight tooth-and-nail for him and made sure that no
one else influenced his players. The Singapore Lions' coach, P. N.
Sivaji, was a soft-spoken man who was harshly criticized for not
bringing the trophy home. Little did he know that someone else had
already decided where the cup was going to showcase.

At one point, I
think that it was in Pal's mind to employ me for his fixes.

"Go back home",
he said to me. "Get your passport and let's go to Penang,
Malaysia".

Pal wanted to use me
as one of his trusted lieutenants. I rushed home and called Bryan.

"Hey Bryan",
I asked, "are you going to Penang with the boss?"

"Yes", he
said, "I'm going".

"Can you pick
me up on the way to the boss's office then?" I inquired.
"Because he told me to come along too".

Bryan agreed but,
within five minutes, I received a call from Pal.

"Wilson",
he said, "you will not make this trip now. I'll probably invite
you some other
time".

"Fuck. Calling
Bryan was a big mistake", I reckoned. "The fucker has just
killed me; that's it".

I put two and two
together and came to the conclusion that Bryan was trying to cut me
off from the boss. Bryan thought that, if I got too close to Pal, he
would be downgraded to number two in the boss's mind. He knew that I
was on par with him; both of us had the same criminal mentality so he
didn't want me around and was poisoning my relationship with Pal.

"This Wilson
guy is dangerous", he probably told Pal. "He can sell
information on this and that. He will leak you out".

Pal had decided not
to engage my services and I was not about to follow him and hump his
leg or beg him to hire me so I turned a blind eye to it all.

In 1994, Pal
promoted Michal from the local league to the Singapore Lions so that
he could compete in the Malaysia Cup. Pal was paying him generously
for his loyalty. I tried calling Michal once while he was playing in
the Lions; within a handful of minutes, I received a call from Pal.

"Why did you
call Michal?" he barked.

"Fuck", I
replied. "I just called to speak to him".

"Fuck you",
he threatened. "You better not call him anymore".

There were, of
course, players in the Malaysia Cup who were neither corrupt nor
corruptible, either because they were very religious or because they
had very strong principles. I remember one such player, Alan
Davidson, an Australian footballer who played for Pahang FA, one of
the Malaysian state teams. Davidson was the best defender in the
entire Malaysia Cup but he happened to stand in Pal's way. Pal had
decided that Singapore was going to win the 1994 Malaysia Cup final
against Davidson's team. He had many of Pahang's players under his
influence but not the Australian defender so, during the semi-final
between Pahang and Kedah in Alor Setar, Malaysia, with the help of a
complacent referee, Pal managed to get Davidson sent
off
and suspended in view of the final. Davidson's absence
from the field in the final made the job easier for his corrupt
team-mates; they accomplished their mission and lost 4-0 to
Singapore, which came away with a stylish victory before 81 thousand
ignorant spectators and millions of viewers back home who assumed
that the cup had been won fairly. In order to avoid unexpected
setbacks, Pal had paid both the Pahang players to concede goals and
the Singapore players to fight like real lions in order to take the
cup home. One of them was the Australian striker Abbas Saad, who
received money directly from his teammate Michal and delivered a
hat-trick for Singapore during the match.

But celebrations
were cut short by a wave of arrests for match-fixing. Five days after
the final, dozens of footballers were apprehended both in Malaysia by
local police and in Singapore by the Corrupt Practices Investigation
Bureau (CPIB). Law enforcement officials were compelled to act
against the rampant corruption in the Malaysia Cup after a Chinese
evening newspaper revealed the final scores on the eve of the
matches. The paper had gone so far as to announce details of who was
going to get a red card during the games. Over one hundred players
were arrested in Malaysia; some were suspended by the Malaysian FA
and some were even banished to remote islands and rural areas. Among
the Singapore players charged was Michal, Pal's protege. Pal himself
was also picked up by the CPIB and turned prosecution witness to
avoid being charged.

Michal proved to be
a tough nut to crack; he sat in silence in the interrogation room for
over 17 hours; he didn't speak
one
word. Eventually, once Pal's statements were on the
record, Michal had to give in. Bail for his release was set
at
half a million Singapore dollars and he was in dire need
of
urgent
assistance. Michal pleaded with his old team-mates, like Fandi Ahmad,
but none were willing to help. Fortunately for him, Pal knew a former
police inspector named Maniam who sometimes took part in our poker
sessions. He gave Maniam half a million dollars in cash and asked him
to bail Michal out. Pal then hired some people to ferry Michal to
Indonesia by boat; whether it was a speedboat or a fishing boat, I
cannot say, but somehow they smuggled Michal out of Singapore. From
Indonesia, Michal was supposed to fly to Sofia, Bulgaria, but the
dumb fucker didn't remember that every flight from Indonesia to
Europe made a stop-over in Singapore. Michal's flight landed back in
the Lion City and the passengers were transferred to another
airplane. According to Michal's account of the events, an airport
steward took notice of him as he walked through the transit terminal.
At that time, Michal was a hot star in Singapore since he had gone
missing and had skipped his court date.

"I thank that
steward", said Michal years later. "Despite taking notice
of me, he did not report my presence on the flight".

Once in Europe,
Michal was able to prove his citizenship and be sent home
to
Prague while Abbas Saad, the player that Michal had paid on behalf of
Pal, was convicted by a Singapore court and handed a global playing
ban from FIFA.

The grand sweep by
the CPIB and Malaysian authorities also caused more lasting damages.
The football associations of Malaysia and Singapore began pointing
accusing fingers at one-another.

"You have not
done enough against corruption", they blamed each other.

To make matters
worse, there were financial disputes between the two associations on
the way that the cup's proceeds were being divided. Eventually,
Singapore pulled out of the Malaysia Cup in 1994 because of
corruption and
because of me and because of you.

"Thank you very
much", they said. "We will not participate anymore".

In late 1994 I was
trying to fix the finals of the Prime Minister's Cup, an amateur
competition also known as the Constituency Cup, between Nee Soon CSC
and Kaki Bukit SC, two local Singapore clubs. Through a friend called
Ah Wang, I obtained the pager number of one of the Kaki Bukit
players, a Malaysian guy whose name I forget
,
and paged him from my family's home in Woodlands. When
the player called me at my home number I introduced myself as Ah
Wang's friend and made my approach.

"Would you be
interested in losing the final against Nee Soon?" I asked.

"How much are
you willing to pay me?" he inquired.

"I'll pay you
from three to five thousand Singapore dollars", I said.

"OK", he
replied, "let me think about it and I'll get back to you".

That
evening, I went to the Genting Highlands Casino in Malaysia and
lost all of my money. When I returned
to Singapore, I found myself without any funds to fix the match, so I
just forgot about it and didn't even bother calling the player back.
The match was played and Kaki Bukit actually lost one-nil to Nee
Soon. On the following day, the player's statements were all over the
papers.

"A bookie
approached me to lose the match", he claimed.

"Fuck", I
thought, "this could be big trouble".

Singapore's CPIB
traced the player's call to my home, where only three possible
culprits
lived
:
my father, my brother and I. My brother was at the army camp for his
national service at the time so it couldn't be him; it was either my
father or myself. I was often staying at a friend's house and would
occasionally drop by my parent's home so, when the CPIB came to my
house and picked my father up, I was not around. Soon the news of my
father's arrest reached me and I didn't know what to do. I called a
friend to seek his advice.

"Shall I turn
myself in or wait for my father's release?" I asked.

The police
department in Singapore can hold on to you for a maximum of 48 hours
for non-capital offenses then, when the two days expire, they have to
either charge you in court and extend your custody or set bail for
your release. Finally, I decided to surrender and went to the police
station where I was arrested and interrogated. At first, I pretended
like I didn't know anything about the matter; the policemen had no
idea that I was a punter and that I was involved in football
gambling. Then they started to play around with my feelings.

"If you don't
admit, we're going to charge your father", an officer
threatened. "Why don't you confess? You will get a stern warning
and that will be the end of it".

The idea of my
father getting charged and going to prison because of me was just too
disturbing to
consider
so I decided to confess.

"It was me",
I admitted. "I was the one who made the call. Let my father go".