Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer
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CHAPTER XVIII
The rat
Early in the morning of the day following my arrest an immigration officer came to see me.
"We're going to bring you to court in the afternoon, at two o'clock", he informed me. "Be ready by then. You will be charged with using a forged document to enter Finland".
The officer then began playing mind-games with me; depicting the worst-case scenario.
"You are probably going to be charged for entering the country with a false document", he said. "Then, in one or two days, you'll be sentenced and deported back to Singapore. If you put up a struggle, we have ways and means of putting you on the flight. We have a special equipment that can lock your hands and feet".
I reckoned that the Finns didn't have the slightest idea of who I really was and what I was doing there. They could have looked me up on the internet; my name was all over the place by then, but I figured that they were not in the least interested. The immigration officer just kept on rambling.
"There will be no bail for you", he continued. "We don't practice the bail system in Finland and you don't have a permanent local address. You may hire a lawyer or the court will appoint one for you; he will tell you that he can get you out but, let me be frank with you, he won't be able to do a thing. No bail, no appeal, nothing".
I asked the officer about applying for asylum.
"Of course, you can apply for asylum if you like", he said with a smirk. "You'll get an answer within 48 hours. If your application is rejected, you can appeal against the decision, but we have the right to deport you before you even get an answer".
The fucker was slapping the door in my face every time that I asked him a question. The image of my deportation back to Singapore, where a five-year sentence was waiting for me, flashed in my mind.
"What kind of a fucked up country is this?" I felt the walls closing in on me. "I thought that you guys exercised human rights. How can you send me back before my appeal is even heard?"
"Well", the officer replied, "the law grants us the power to deport you before the appeal. And if you give us a headache, we have this gadget that we can put on you to lock your arms and legs".
The fucking gadget again. This guy was such a fucker that I wanted to punch him straight in the face, and I think that I would have, if not for the thick metal bars between us.
My mind was racing; two days left before going back to Singapore. I needed a plan.
"There are no direct flights from Rovaniemi to Singapore", I thought as the officer babbled on, "nor from Helsinki. Any flight out will have to stop in Frankfurt, Germany. While on the flight to Frankfurt, I can create some chaos and be arrested by the Germans when I land there; then I'll see what happens".
Shortly before two o'clock, two policemen, one of them a woman, escorted me out of my cell to the parking lot, where a police car was waiting to take me to the local courthouse. The city outside was peaceful, quiet and covered by a soft blanket of snow and ice. I examined my captors; the guy had somewhat of a tummy and I reckoned that he couldn't have chased me, had I started running. The officers accompanied me outside; they didn't even cuff me or anything. I climbed inside the police car and off we went.
Rovaniemi is a very small town and the courthouse was very close to the police station. As we rode in the car, I paid careful attention to the buildings and sites that I could recognize, trying to figure out exactly where I was. I saw the Hotel Cumulus and a number of other spots that I had come to know during my sojourns in town. When we reached the courthouse, I was informed that the authorities in Singapore had been lightning-quick and had already confirmed my true identity based on my fingerprints.
"This man is Wilson Raj Perumal", they had communicated, "a Singaporean citizen and a fugitive from the law".
The judge informed me in accordance with what the immigration officer had anticipated.
"We will charge you for forgery and for providing false information on your identity", he stated. "We will offer you no bail because you are not a resident of Finland. The session is closed. You will be escorted back to police lock-up and I'll see you here again in two days from today".
The immigration officer hadn't lied; the Finns were ready to deport me even as I applied for asylum. I desperately needed to extend my stay in Rovaniemi; there was no way that I was going to let them send me back to Singapore. Five more years in prison? No fucking way.
As the police officers that had accompanied me to the courthouse escorted me back towards the car I tried to slow down my racing mind.
"Fuck, I have to do something", I thought, "I need to buy time. I need to stay here longer than the two days that they are offering me".
As we made our way in the thick snow towards the police car, I considered my options. I could try to run, then I would try to find Musonda and ask him for some financial support or for some help in getting away from the scene and hiding from the police. They might have known by then that I had links with football players, so I had to be quick: get some money into my pockets and disappear. Yes, that was the plan. The first thing that I needed to do was run, then find a place to hide: below a car or in the bathroom of some building. I would have surely found a safe hiding place; in a city, it's quite simple to locate one. Then I needed to get properly equipped. I would have broken into a house and stolen a jacket or something; I was fucking freezing. If they had caught me, it could have meant an additional burglary charge against me. In life, you have to give it a try to find out what's next, if you don't, you'll never know what could be waiting for you down the line. Just like in the movies: the protagonists try and try until there's a breakthrough because, if they don't try, then their story-line cannot evolve. I reckoned that I had everything to gain and nothing left to lose. I didn't want to hit the officers; I don't like to hurt people. It's not in my nature to harm somebody unless I am forced to. I gazed at the officer walking beside me; he looked like an innocent bloke, I could have never punched him. I was wearing a pair of Adidas sneakers and there was a thick mantle of snow all around me but I just had to give it a go. I dashed forward: one step, two steps, my shoes were sliding, entirely out of control. I fell with my face in the snow. It was like skating on ice. I got up, puff, I slipped again; there was no way that I could run. Had I been able to run, they would have never caught me, but I just took those two steps and there I was on the ground with both officers already on top of me. Just two steps: from here to there, my escape had been less than five meters long. The chubby officer held me down as the policewoman flooded my eyes with pepper spray. The spray was no fucking joke; my eyes were on fire. Take my advice, never fuck around with pepper spray. Within minutes, extra reinforcements had arrived on the scene.
"Fuck. OK. Let's go back", I moaned as two officers lifted me out of the snow.
I was driven back to the police station where I was allowed to wash my eyes and face, then I apologized to the policemen.
"Hey", I said to the woman, "I'm sorry".
I was placed back inside my cell with an additional charge: attempting to escape police custody.
On the following day, some new officers showed up in front of my cell. My case had been taken over by the NBI, the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation. A really tall guy who said his name was Janne spoke to me.
"So, Mr. Perumal", he asked, "what can you tell us about this deal you had with Tampere United?"
Fuck. The guy held a copy of my unsigned agreement with the club in front of my face. I had disposed of the contract with Tampere in the hotel's paper bin after Dan had decided to call the deal off and that's probably where the police had found it.
"What is this 1.5 million euro agreement you had with Tampere?" inquired Janne.
"Fuck!" I thought.
I tried to conceal my reaction.
"I wasn't doing anything with Tampere", I said, "I'm here simply because I'm a gambler. I watch football matches and I bet on them".
"OK", Janne raised his shoulders, then left.
"I'm here to bet on football matches", I stuck to my cover story.
"What is your relationship with Musonda", he inquired.
"I'm his friend", I said, "I usually ask for his opinion on his team's strengths and weaknesses or anything else that can facilitate me in my betting".
The police had confiscated all of my belongings. My laptop, my mobile phone and the suitcase with my clothes in it. In addition to these, they had also found some folders containing all of my documents regarding the deal with PoPa FC. The unfortunate thing about my laptop was that, the second you turned it on, everything opened by default. All of my passwords were saved in the system. You see, I don't belong to the IT generation. I don't know how computers work; in fact, I type with two fingers and am totally hopeless with technology. I never configured the computer to log in to my accounts automatically, it just happened to be that way and I thought: "Fuck. This is convenient. So be it".
The Finnish police must have also found it convenient when they accessed all of the e-mails from my Exclusive Sports mailbox and the logs from my Skype account; I had never bothered to log out from either. Then they checked my mobile phone. All of my Finnish contacts were listed as Finn-something: Finn that guy, Finn this guy. I didn't use real names, I had made up some Finn-equivalent for Mweetwa, the Georgian players and so on. They weren't listed as Finn-Georgia, but as Finn-George or something. Arttu questioned me as to whom these phone numbers belonged to and I answered that they were friends that I had met whose full names I did not know or remember. The NBI had also noticed that I used a number of different SIM cards.
"You change your phone number very often", Arttu pointed out.
Sometimes, when I happened to travel to remote places like Qatar, I would buy several one-dollar SIM cards and load some credit on them. Then, when I had to talk dirty things over the telephone, I would use a Qatari phone number so that anyone wishing to stick their nose in my business would have to submit a request for the call records in Doha. I am not a smart-phone kind of guy so I just tried to keep a step ahead of the system with what was within my reach.
The only phone number among my contacts that the Finnish authorities were able to identify was Finn-Musonda. They knew that there was a connection between us but couldn't place him under arrest for being acquainted with me. Then my Skype logs fucked everything up. The police searched the log archive, which I had never bothered to delete, and found that I had sent one thousand US dollars to Musonda in Zambia on Christmas. The Western Union transaction number and details were all there. It was enough for them to pick Musonda up too. Musonda was a soft-spoken boy and not a tough nut to crack at all. When the police turned the screw on him, he crumbled like a pack of cards and began singing.
"Why did you send this money to Musonda?" Arttu asked me.
"It was Christmas", I argued. "It was a Christmas present".
"But what was its purpose?" he pried.
"Look", I answered, "I bet on football matches. I made friends with this guy, Musonda, and I generally get inside information on whether a team is weak or strong from its players, that's all. I came here to watch the RoPS matches and to bet on them. Period".
I was an expert in police interrogation techniques; the Singapore CPIB had been my training ground.
"You know", smiled Arttu, "Musonda has already admitted to everything. We have your telephone records that prove your link to him; Musonda received messages from you and failed to delete them, so they are also in our hands. Musonda hasn't deleted a single message since 2010".
I stood my ground and kept my mouth shut.
"OK", said Arttu. "What about the Yobe brothers? We know what you did with them".
In that precise instant I knew that I was fucked. The cat was out of the bag. If Musonda had told the police about the Yobe brothers, it meant that there was nothing that he had withheld from them. I would have protected the two brothers at all costs. One of them was now playing with HIFK, Helsinki's football club and Finland's finest team. I would have gladly stayed in prison rather than ruin his career.
On the following day, the rest of the Zambians and the two Georgian brothers from RoPS were landed behind bars. Musonda had been singing and the others were joining the choir one by one.
"This is true", they admitted, "that's also true".
After listening to them, Arttu came to me. He had a slip of paper with the printout of the SMS that I had sent to Musonda after RoPS had failed to grant us the four goals that we wanted against VPS on February 16th. He read the message out loud: "U guys are stupid. Where is the one more goal? So close n still you can't get the job done".
"What's this?" he asked joyfully. "Is this true?"
In normal circumstances, I would have never spoken to the police. I had been to prison in Singapore on four different occasions and not once had I turned prosecution witness against my associates or enemies alike. When you indulge in dirty business, you cannot side with the prosecution. But here in Finland the circumstances were completely different. I had a five-year prison term staring me in the face in one of the world's most ruthless prison systems; locked up for 23 hours per day with nothing to do but read books. Five long years in the shit-hole. The last thing that I needed was to antagonize the NBI and be sent back to Singapore. The RoPS boys had already admitted to their guilt; who was I to play the hero and fight a war that I could not win? If anything, prison in Finland would have given me sufficient time to find a way out of this mess.
I just went through the motion: "Yes, yes, they did this, I did that".
Then I asked: "What is likely to happen to me, Arttu?"
"Well", he explained, "first they will charge you, then they'll send you to prison. If you get a suspended sentence you will not go to jail and will be deported to Singapore but, if you are sentenced to over one year in detention, you will have to serve your time here".
One year? Two years? For the first time in my life the prospect of going to prison was a relief; the possibility that I would not be sent home so soon produced a warm feeling of shelter and security. As expected, my application for asylum on grounds of disproportionate punishment in Singapore was duly rejected by the Finnish authorities. Then, in early March, Dan bought a ticket for my sister and put her on a flight to Rovaniemi to visit me. I wouldn't have blamed her if she had decided not to fly all the way to Finland just to see me. I am able to cope with unfortunate circumstances; the nature of this business is such that you will have to be prepared for the worst. When she was finally before me, we discussed my arrest.
"It must be Benny", I told her, "he must have ratted me out".
"Benny called me after your arrest", she said, "he claims that it was not him. I've heard rumors that it could have been Anthony".
"Why would Anthony want to do something like this to me?" I argued.
"I don't know", she replied, "but rumors in Singapore are rife".
My sister stayed in Rovaniemi for about a week, then flew back to Singapore.
One day, as I walked from the shower to my cell, I examined the other rooms in police lock-up.
"Fuck", I thought, "there is a television set in that room. It's either a computer screen or a TV".
I decided to ask one of the prison guards about the rooms with screens in them.
"What's that?" I queried. "Do you have computers in there?"
"No", he replied, "that's a television".
"You mean", I paused, "am I allowed to stay in there?"
"In order to stay in there", he answered, "you will need the permission of your investigating officer".
I immediately checked with Arttu.
"Yes", he replied, "you can move in there if you want".
"You mean that I can stay inside that room and watch the television?" I aske
d again, trying to figure out whether it was some sort of Finnish joke they were playing on me.
"No problem", explained Arttu, "you are not a pedophile; yours is not a big case or anything like that. I can put you in that room if you wish".
"If it's OK", I said, "you put me in there".
"Fuck", I thought, "TV? This is like a 3-star hotel in Geylang".
It was the end of winter and, while everything and everyone outside was still freezing, I stayed in what seemed to be a comfortable retreat; light years away from prison in Singapore. I had my hot coffee mixture and the BBC; I could shower once a day; I was allowed to place orders for pizza and soft-drinks twice a day; I got my lawyer to buy some books for me. Life was OK. After a few days spent watching television, I called Arttu.
"Arttu", I inquired, "is it possible to get some dumbbells?"
I needed to do some exercise to keep in shape.
"I will speak to the warden and let you know", replied Arttu.
He soon came back and, with the same old smile pasted on his face, informed me that weights were not allowed in police lock-up.
"Sorry Wilson", he said, "it's not possible to bring dumbbells in here".
"It's OK", I replied, "if you get me two bottles of mineral water, two two-liter bottles, I'll just use those".
I got my bottles and I was trying to keep in shape. I would do push-ups, lift my weights, go for a shower, come back, watch the news, read a book. The only downside of police lock-up in Finland was the food.
"Arttu", I complained, "the food is very bad in here".
"What do you want me to buy for you?" Arttu asked.
I hesitated at first, I couldn't bring myself to believe that he would go out there and get food for me. Then I gave him a list of what I wished to have and he went out to buy the items that I had requested. I stored the food in the police station's fridge and would use their microwave to heat my meals. It didn't feel like a prison anymore.
You see, the true aim of a term in jail is to keep one secluded from the rest of society. But the Singapore prison system takes it to another level: they deprive you of news, proper food, restrict your communications to once a fortnight and conjugal visits are not allowed. When a prisoner is sentenced to serve five years in prison, he can kiss goodbye to his family; it is very rare for a woman to wait that long for a man. Many families are broken apart by heavy prison sentences; only the ones that are gifted with an incredibly strong emotional bond have a chance to survive. I was beginning to understand what the Finnish flight marshal had meant when he had said, "We are a civilized country".