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

by Wilson Raj Perumal

"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. Imm
ediately, 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?"

  Deniz and Harri seemed acquiescent.

  "If someone brings 900 thousand euro to my table", I reckoned, "why should I question how much that person is making in the process?"

  We shook hands and parted ways. My mistake with Tampere was not to get their signature on a contract when we had transferred the second installment to them in November 2010. I had prevented Mohamed Rais, the then-director of Exclusive Sports, from meeting with them at the time because I was afraid that my dirty scheme would be unveiled. By now, Dan had moved in as the director of Exclusive Sports and he wasn't about to give me a power of attorney to act on his behalf; it was too late.

  After the Tampere guys left the Holiday Inn, I proceeded to meet with the owner of FC PoPa, Antti. He seemed flexible enough and I had good hopes of repeating the Tampere scheme with him. FC PoPa was another club in desperate need of quick money.

  "Can we put four or five players in your team?" I asked Antti.

  "I've got space for four", he replied. "That's the most I can give you".

  Antti was a very nice and jovial fellow, he was a pretty straight-forward guy and I had no trouble talking business with him. I think that he was ready; if I had been given the chance and some more time, I believe that I could have lured him to my side. To be honest, FC PoPa would have been a better investment than Tampere.

  "Look here", I could have said to Antti, "we put four strikers, two defenders and play around with total goals; score three, concede one".

  But I didn't; I just put Antti on hold. FC PoPa needed to be first promoted to the Veikkausliiga, the Finnish Premier league; that's where the money was. The volume for Veikkausliiga's games was huge: 18 thousand dollars per click. In the second division, Ykkonen, the volume was not that big and the standard was very low. Had we gone ahead with our deal, I could have easily gotten FC PoPa promoted within the span of a single season. People think of me only as a match-fixer, but I have been watching football for over 35 years. I know what a team needs in order to produce the right results.

  As announced, in mid-February 2011, Zeekay landed at the Helsinki Vantaa airport and I was there to welcome him. Dan called me to relay instructions on how to find him.

  "Go to this café at the Arrivals terminal", he said, "there will be a guy sitting there. You go there and approach him, OK? What are you wearing?"

  "I'm wearing a Barcelona top".

  "OK, then he will find you", said Dan.

  I stepped in the airport café mentioned by Dan and sat down. I looked around and saw a man staring straight into my eyes.

  "Zeekay?"

  We shook hands. Zeekay was traveling with his runner, Lecso.

  "All right Zeekay", I said, "everything is set with Tampere United. We have our meeting scheduled for next week. But before we meet with them, we've got some business to attend in Rovaniemi. Let's go there first".

  We traveled together to Rovaniemi and spoke to the RoPS players before their February 16th, 2011, League Cup away match against Vaasan Palloseura (VPS). RoPS had been promoted to the Veikkausliiga and were now more inviting to Dan and his syndicate because of the higher betting volumes that they could offer. We met the players in a local café where we discussed the game plan.

  "Score or concede a total of four goals", I said to Musonda and the others as we placed 80 thousand euro in their eager hands.

  Zeekay, Lecso and I then traveled to Vaasa, VPS's home ground, to watch the match. Everything was running smoothly; with 30 minutes left to play and with RoPS three goals down, we were waiting to cash in on the Over 3.5; we just needed one more goal for a clean win. There was a penalty given away by the Canadian VPS goalkeeper, but the RoPS player missed and we lost our bet. I could not believe that six players out of eleven could not concede a single goal in a full half-hour. In so doing, they had lost 80 thousand euro. Absolutely stupid. I was furious and, after the referee blew the final whistle, immediately sent an SMS to Musonda.

  "U guys are stupid", it read. "Where is the one more goal? So close n still you can't get the job done".

  After the match, Zeekay and I went to Pori to meet with the FC PoPa owner Antti, who was growing desperate for cash.

  "Please help us", he pleaded, "we need money now".

  I introduced Zeekay as one of my sponsors and we talked about our intention of putting four of our players in the team. Zeekay and I agreed that if we could find a few quality players to get the goals scored and the team promoted, then we could fuck around with PoPa's Veikkausliiga matches. We didn't need to bring the cup home; what were we going to do with the championship title?

  That same night Zeekay and I met the RoPS players in Rovaniemi to recover the 80 thousand euro deposit that we had left with them before their last match. Zeekay put on his fierce face and confronted them.

  "Where's my money?" he growled. "I want my 80 thousand back and I want it now. You didn't do the job that was asked of you and I don't want to hear excuses. If you don't pay me my 80 thousand, there is going to be big trouble".

  These guys were footballers, they didn't want to get into a confrontation with Zeekay so, the minute things got tense, they gave up and began bringing the money back little by little. First they showed up with 40 thousand, then some of them came to me with the usual African sob story.

  "I've already sent some money home to my family", they whimpered.

  "OK", I told them. "You go over there, speak to Zeekay and explain your situation".

  In the end, Zeekay and I recovered about 70 out of the 80 thousand euro that we had left with the players. Then Zeekay and I split up as he had some urgent matters to sort out back home.

  I returned to London only to be back in Finland on the 20th of February for the following match: RoPS vs FF Jaro. Zeekay and I had agreed to do business in the second half of the game but, about halfway through the first half, one of our boys from RoPS took a red card and was sent off the pitch. As the players were warming up for the second 45 minutes, I signaled to one of them to approach me and I called the fix off.

  "Cancel", I said to him. "Finished".

  We called off all of our bets. With FF Jaro numerically advantaged, the odds for a RoPS defeat were too unattractive, so we decided to skip the game. After the match, Zeekay and Lecso stayed in Rovaniemi as I left for Tampere to make arrangements for our meeting with Deniz.

  During our time together in Finland, I got to know Zeekay and I must say that he's quite a nice guy. We spoke at length about Dan and his associates and we agreed on many things. By then, Dan had settled his debts and was making money again. He wanted to show off with the newcomers and especially with Zeekay, who agreed to call Dan 'boss' out of courtesy. Zeekay was very loyal to Dan but didn't like Dan's other European partners because, in his eyes, they were all quite arrogant.

  "Fuck", said Zeekay, speaking of Kosta, "you've been to prison for smuggling cigarettes, a menial offense, and then you boast that you are a big shot".

  Zeekay was not hug-and-kiss with Admir either.

  "This mother-fucker", he poked, "came with his Porsche under my house and was going brum, brum, in front of me. Then he hopped out of his car and started walking around with a swagger. He must have forgotten that, the first time I met him,
he was driving a Datsun".

  Dan's European associates could not look each other in the eyes but, when the money was on the table, they would take it without hesitating: business is business.

  The meeting with the Tampere United management was scheduled for the 22nd of February 2011. I was pretty positive that everything was going to go smoothly, Deniz had been informed about my commission and seemed to be willing to play along. This time around Zeekay landed in Tampere together with a football agent that he had brought along to impress the club's managers. I met Zeekay and his agent in the hotel's lobby, we had a cup of coffee together then I told the two to wait for me while I fetched Deniz; I wanted to make sure that the Tampere guys would keep quiet about the money that I had taken. When Deniz arrived, I reminded him to tell Zeekay that they had received 600 thousand euro, not 300 thousand.

  "No", Deniz unexpectedly turned the tables on me, "we cannot agree to say that we received 600 thousand. We cannot do that, we have to tell them the truth, that we only received 300 thousand euro".

  "If you tell them the truth", I warned Deniz, "they are going to pull out of the deal".

  Dan and Zeekay were already debating whether or not to cancel the agreement because the Tampere United management was a little too stiff for their taste; Tampere expected us to release the rest of the 1.5 million sponsorship while they continued to pick players of their choice instead of using ours. I sensed that the shit was about to hit the fan so I left Deniz for a moment and decided to call Dan and anticipate to him what Deniz was about to reveal to Zeekay.

  "Dan", I confessed, "out of the 600 thousand that you gave me, the Tampere guys only received 300 thousand. The remaining 300 thousand I took as a loan".

  "You mother-fucker", shrieked Dan in triumph. "Now that the shit is out of your asshole, you confess to me? You're a fucking bastard, I knew all along that you were doing this".

  "Dan", I tried to justify myself, "I'm just using the 300 thousand on another business right now. I'll pay you back soon enough".

  "Then why the fuck didn't you tell me until the last second?" he hollered. "I knew from the very start that something was wrong: that's why I sent Zeekay over. Where the fuck is my 300 thousand?"