Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer

by Wilson Raj Perumal

  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.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Repeat offender

  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?"

  I was planning to share the Benin match with Dan and keep Mozambique for myself.

  "Alassane is in Angola already", Dan said to my surprise. "But you promise me that you will not give him any trouble".

  It's the nature of our business. Dan had sent Alassane to Luanda as a scout to survey possible business opportunities. Whereas I already had my network in place, Alassane was roaming the town hoping that he could approach a few players for a last minute fix.

  "OK, don't worry", I reassured Dan. "I am here on business. I don't want any trouble myself. You just tell that fucker to come over and see me".

  Alassane popped out of nowhere and we met for the first time after his betrayal at the Gold Cup in the United States. He was afraid that I would hurt him but I had given Dan my word that I wouldn't have. I got Alassane in touch with the Beninese players before their match against Egypt then left for Lubango, southern Angola, where Mozambique was set to play against Nigeria. I knew a few of the Mozambican players because I had flown them to Malaysia in 2008 for the Merdeka Cup, but, when I landed in Lubango, there was not enough time to speak to them and reach a compromise. I dropped my fix and decided to watch the match as a simple spectator. Meanwhile, my boys from Benin ended up losing 2-0 to Egypt in Cabinda, allowing Dan and I to win money on the handicap. After the Africa Cup of Nations' last group s
tage matches were over, I headed back to Singapore to attend my trial's court hearing.

  The hearing was due to begin at nine o'clock in the morning on January 27th, 2010, but I got there late. I didn't oversleep; I simply went to the wrong courtroom and ended up being ten minutes tardy. The court had been taken down for 15 minutes to wait for me. As I looked frantically for the correct courtroom, I spotted my lawyer who was waiting for me in the corridor.

  "The prosecution is asking for corrective training", he said. "They dug up your file and treated you like a repeat offender".

  Corrective training meant five years without reduction and no possibility of remission; minimum five years you have to sit. I was one of the most proficient contributors to the economy of Singapore and yet they wanted to send me to corrective training. CT is for worthless people who can't fit into society: rapists, molesters and drug traffickers, not for someone who has had an argument over a parking ticket. I was shocked. Fuck.

  "For this offense, they want to give me five years without remission? What did they write in the corrective training report?" I asked my lawyer.

  I was in the dark, not knowing what was going on. I hadn't paid due attention to my case and now I realized that I had grossly underestimated the entire incident. I hoped that the judge would not agree with the prosecution. My mind was racing.

  "What can I do not to go to court?" I thought. "Shall I go to the toilet and fake an epileptic attack or something and be hospitalized?"

  I needed time to think about my next move; there was no fucking way that I was going to sit behind bars for five more fucking years. As I stood gazing into open space, the court reconvened and my lawyer rushed me inside.

  "Hey, come, come", he uttered in a preoccupied tone, "the court is waiting".

  I stood on the doorstep in a daze, not wanting to walk in.

  "Corrective training", the words echoed in my head.

  I walked in hesitantly and sat down in the dock. Everyone around me was talking but their words produced an indistinguishable babel that I could not decipher; I could not understand what they all wanted from me. My lawyer submitted my written mitigation on the incident and the judge noticed that there were some discrepancies between my account of the events and the prosecutor's.

  "The accused accelerated the vehicle and hit the victim on the right knee once, then accelerated his car again and hit the victim a second time in the same spot", the prosecution claimed.

  My version was that I drove very slowly and neither harmed nor intended to harm the CISCO security guard. I mean, even at five kilometers per hour, if I knock into you with my car, you will not stand there like the CISCO security guard did; you'll be sent flying to the ground. It's just common sense. And how could I hit a person twice on the same knee and have him suffer a mere contusion? The entire scene was recorded on CCTV but the judge never saw the recording because I had pleaded guilty; there was no reason for him to examine the evidence. Still, my written account of the events had struck the right note.

  "There is a qualification in this mitigation", the judge said to my lawyer. "It looks like your client is retracting his plea, doesn't agree with the prosecution and that the mitigation conflicts the charges".

  I was so blacked out that I didn't hear the judge's next question.

  "Does your client wish to retract his guilty plea?"

  It's exactly what I wanted to do but I was in a mist and my lawyer didn't ask the judge to stand the matter down to consult me. Even a lawyer who had just completed his pupillage would have known that it was the correct thing to do. The judge himself should have realized as much, since we had tendered the mitigation after the court had reconvened. There was no possibility that we could have anticipated the judge's request; he should have told my lawyer: "Speak to your client first. Why are you answering on his behalf without asking him for his opinion? Stand the matter down and consult your client".

  The judge didn't say what he was supposed to say and my lawyer didn't do what he was supposed to do. No one gave a fuck whether I understood the nature and consequences of what I was facing. My lawyer simply said: "Your honor, my client doesn't want to retract his plea".

  Five years, fuck, I'd go crazy. But that is how the judges in Singapore saw it: three crimes on three different occasions, five years. Repeat offender. It's common practice in the Singapore courts.

  "Ha, ha", I could almost hear the judges' rumbling laughter as they sat discussing my case before lunch.

  "This fucker is in court again! We're going to whack him really hard this time".

  The Singaporean legal system saw its chance to nail me and it did.

  "No doubt the offense is of a very mild nature", said the judge in his conclusions, "but you have too much disrespect for law enforcement officials and that is why I'm giving you five years of corrective training".

  Bam.

  The CISCO officers were no law enforcement officials; they were private security guards. If they had been law enforcement officials, they would have handcuffed me, placed me under arrest and searched my vehicle. Instead, they had to call the police to come and conduct the investigation on my car. It was a shame that a seasoned judge didn't know or care to acknowledge the difference between law enforcement officials and private security guards.

  "Put him in jail for three weeks", the judge ordered, "so that I can carry out a mental evaluation to see if he's fit for corrective training".

  I was sent for three weeks in the Changi Prison Complex, during which time I underwent a psychiatric evaluation. Once inside, as I read a copy of my trial's transcript, it dawned on me.

  "Fuck", I thought, "I had the opportunity to retract my plea and my lawyer didn't tell me".

  I immediately called him.

  "Why didn't you ask me whether I wanted to retract my plea?" I asked.

  "I did ask you", he defended himself.

  "You mother-fucker", I shouted at him. "Somebody gives me five years in prison and you think that I don't want to retract my plea? Is that what you're saying? You think that Wilson Raj is ready to put his neck on the chopping block for somebody to chop it without retracting his plea? You're a fucking liar!"

  I was so angry that I sent a message to Rajendra Prasad, who had introduced this joker to me.

  The message read: "Rajendra Prasad, you are like a devil in my life. You came into my existence and I lost 500 thousand dollars on the Monomotapa United game in Tunisia. Every time I used your on-line betting accounts I lost money. Then you took 400 thousand dollars away from me together with Ah Kang. I sent you to China for the match against Botswana and you fucked that up too. Then you tried, together with Manimaran, to pull the rug from under my feet in Syria. Finally, I ask you for a lawyer and you get me this mother-fucker that gets me convicted to five years for an argument with a security guard. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

  I fired the lawyer and asked my family to engage another counsel. They hired a prominent Singaporean criminal lawyer. When his assistant came to see me in prison, I immediately asked him to submit an application to retract my plea on grounds of negligence in my representation. My new lawyer and I claimed that it was the defense counsel's duty to check with the prosecution on whether they were going to address the court on the day of the sentence. The prosecutors promptly replied that my former lawyer had indeed been informed, a circumstance which he vehemently denied. The court rejected my application and did not allow me to retract my guilty plea.

  On February 17th I was escorted back to court. The psychiatric evaluation report had been filed and it stated that I was fit for corrective training but that my chances of offending again were slim. Somehow the report was slightly in my favor but the prosecution opposed its findings. I appealed in order to retract my plea; my new lawyer argued that the judge had the duty to inform me of the request for corrective training before the day of the sentence.

  "The court did not know about the antecedents of the accused", replied the judge. "It was therefore impossible
for the judge to tell the accused that he was going to be convicted to five years of corrective training ahead of time".

  This was the same judge who had sentenced me to one year for the assault on Ivica Raguz; maximum punishment. He had then sent me in for the fist fight with my girlfriend's sister's boyfriend, illegal assembly and for false information; maximum punishment for all of them. Even back then he had told me that, under normal circumstances and had the law granted him the power, he would have slapped me with corrective training. And here I was again sitting in front of him; one could hardly believe that he had no prior knowledge of my antecedents.

  "You're a fucking dishonest, prejudiced, biased and vindictive bastard", I wanted to shout in his face, but I kept silent.

  The application to retract my plea was dismissed and I was sentenced to five years of corrective training. I appealed against the dismissal of my application and against my conviction in an attempt to buy time. I filed a request for a criminal revision of my case in the High Court as well. The appeal trial was scheduled for July. The judge set my bail at 40 thousand Singapore dollars; I got Mega to bail me out asap.

  As soon as I was released, I tried to apply for a new passport. I told the authorities that I needed to leave the jurisdiction to terminate some business overseas but they didn't buy my claims. The prosecution was ready to contest my request because they claimed that I was at flight risk and that they had heard rumors that I was planning to jump bail. How these rumors had come by the prosecutor's ears was a mystery. My lawyer suggested that I drop the idea.

  "It is best you cancel your passport application", he argued, "because the judge has the power to withdraw your bail and lock you up again".

  I had filed similar requests in the past and had been allowed to leave the country without any hassle, each time duly returning to Singapore when my business abroad was over. This time around the Singapore authorities were beginning to terrorize me: I felt cornered; I needed a way out. My lawyer waited for the grounds of decision, consulted his advisers and came up with his conclusion.