Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer
Page 43
My blood rushed to my head. Anthony, my childhood friend. I had taught the bastard what this whole business was about. I had paid him 20 to 30 thousand dollars per match when, at his age, I was organizing an entire Merdeka Cup for 10 thousand. Like Brutus with Caesar, father with son, he had stabbed me in the back and I couldn't find a single reason for him to do so. I was dumbfounded. Anthony didn't owe me a cent and I didn't owe him a cent. I was the boss, of course, but I had taught him how to become one himself: take your 30 thousand and invest them on your next match. 30, 60, 90, you make your money and then you become your own boss; gradually. You don't kill somebody else to become the top-man; there is no need to fuck others during your climb. The money is out there, you just need to put your brain to good use. When Dan wanted Lebanon, I gave it to him. When he took Haiti and Alassane from me, I let them go. I didn't run over to the police to make a report about him. Had I used my hockey stick on these fuckers perhaps I would have instilled some fear in them; now I bitterly regretted not doing so. Murugan's words echoed in my head.
"Dan can turn friends into foes", he had warned. "He is a very bad, dangerous fellow".
Mega and Anthony were neighbors in Singapore, so I decided to invest some of my telephone credit to ring Mega up.
"You tell this mother-fucker", I said to him, "that one day, I don't know when, I will come after him. I will not sleep peacefully until I even the score with the bastard".
Then I contacted Zaihan and answered his questions on Danny, Mohamed Hassan, Mohamed Rais, Anthony and on his company Footy Media International.
"I was not intelligent enough to spot the wolves", I wrote to Zaihan. "I would have admired my enemy if he had brought the sword to my heart instead of my back".
It was now visible that Dan was also involved in my arrest but I continued to give him the benefit of the doubt. As for Joseph Xie Tan, I had no ill feelings towards him because he was just a puppet; I would not consider him my enemy. If I was a poor bastard and someone offered me ten thousand dollars to file a report against another person that I did not know, perhaps I would do it too; that would not make me that person's enemy. But there is one thing that I would like to say to Joseph.
"You are Chinese, and Chinese people have certain standards. You don't have the pedigree to call yourself a Chinese".
In mid-July, as expected, the Finnish court sentenced me to two years in prison; no suspended sentence and no extradition, since there was no treaty between Singapore and Finland. As for the RoPS players, they all received suspended sentences and were banned from the game by FIFA. I am not a hypocrite. When a player gets banned for fixing with me it really affects me a lot. But I will not feel responsible for the choices made by others. I don't coerce anybody into fixing a match. When I approach a player, neither of us expects to be caught and we are both doing it for the money. After being sentenced, I was to be transferred from police lock-up to a regular prison.
"Arttu", I asked, "can I stay here for my entire sentence?"
I didn't want to go to prison. Everything was running smoothly in police lock-up with Arttu. It was like a hotel: I had a mobile phone, my satellite TV, my gambling and there were no searches; none at all.
"I'm sorry Wilson", said Arttu. "We cannot keep you here. You've been sentenced and you'll have to go to prison".
At the end of July I was transferred to prison in Oulu, where I was supposed to serve my sentence. Since I have no fear in my heart, I decided that I would try to bring my mobile phone along. I put it and its charger inside a sock, wrapped it up in a ball and stuck it in my underwear. When I got to the Oulu penitentiary, I had to stand in a line with the other prisoners and, when my turn came, had to take off all my clothes so that the guards could check that I wasn't smuggling anything inside. As I took off my shirt I threw a quick look around me: the policeman in charge of checking us was facing away from me and speaking to another officer; he was not paying attention. I extracted the sock from my underwear and rolled it on the floor. The officers looked through my clothes and checked me to see whether I was concealing anything: "Pull up your testicles. OK, done".
As I was putting my clothes back on I reached down, collected the rolled-up sock, and quickly plunged it into my side pocket. Once again, I had a telephone in my cell.
The Oulu prison was also fitted with a television but no satellite channels because some of the inmates had abused the system. I checked with one of the prisoners if there was any way to smuggle satellite TV cards into the prison and he said that there was. I gave him five hundred euro and asked him to get me a card but the mother-fucker bought himself a huge stereo and ignored my request altogether. What could I do? I learned my lesson the expensive way. Fortunately, the prison's television had a teletext so I could check the football fixtures and the results came in as soon as the goals were scored. I continued gambling with my telephone just to kill time.
Meanwhile, on the outside, Dan was moving his pawns extremely well. Before being arrested, I had unknowingly given him the chance to steal my Latin American contacts. In early February, Dan had sent Zeekay to El Salvador for their match against Haiti and, although the game had not appeared on betting websites, the trip had not been a total waste of time. I had made arrangements for Zeekay to meet the Cuban national team players who were also in El Salvador for their centralized training. The Finnish investigators informed me that Dan's Hungarian partners had paid my agent in Cuba ten thousand dollars to do business with them. Before my arrest I had also introduced Armando to Dan and now the fuckers were busy with Cuba and Grenada, two of my teams, in the 2011 CONCACAF Gold Cup. Dan, Armando and the others fixed six Gold Cup matches, all of which ended with a four-goal margin or above. Cuba and Grenada conceded goals as if they had no goalkeepers and nobody bothered to give me a cent or even to inform me about the business. My executioners were making millions with my teams as I sat counting bars.
Finally, I received feedback from the source that I had hired in Singapore to track Joseph Xie Tan down. He informed me that Joseph's address had changed and that he could not be reached. He also added that the ticket to Rovaniemi that Joseph had used to fly there and fix me up was issued by Cosmos Travel, Dan's travel agency. The credit on my SIM card was running out and I was left with just enough for one more call. I didn't want to speak to Anthony because I was certain that he had betrayed me so I decided to invest the last of my credit on Dan. His telephone rang a couple of times before the fucker picked up.
"Dan", I started, "did you fix Cuba at the Gold Cup?"
"No", he replied, "I didn't fix Cuba. The Cubans will take anyone's money".
"Don't play this game with me Dan", I said bitterly, "you better give me my share".
"Wilson", he replied defensively, "you misused my money in Finland and all. I'll give you 50 thousand".
"Dan, this guy, Joseph Xie Tan. My people went to his address and he wasn't there".
"He probably moved".
"Dan, Joseph was in Antalya with Anthony".
Dan paused.
"Wilson", he finally spoke, "I don't know this Joseph Xie Tan. Maybe Anthony was hiding this guy somewhere. I don't know".
"Dan, did you fix me up?"
"No, I didn't. Anybody could have done it. Maybe Anthony was the one that set you up".
"OK, good".
Chicken shit.
I was facing five years of prison in Singapore. I couldn't go back and serve more time; I would have gone fucking mad. So long as there was a life buoy to save myself, I didn't give a fuck who else died. Despite Dan's denial, I knew that he was the first one not to give a fuck about my fate. He knew that I would serve five years if I were deported to Singapore but had no mercy on me. Why should I have mercy on him? In our line of business, you don't run to the police to iron out differences. Either you destroy me, or you sit at the table and thrash things out with me so that we can find an amicable settlement. And Dan should have destroyed me when he had the chance.
My turning prosecution
witness wasn't going to be the first step on a righteous path to redemption. I was doing it out of constraint: I needed to survive. You see, we all come into this world as animals; predators. We prey on weaker people to make money and survive. Dan, Pal, Bryan, myself and all the others: we are match-fixers; it's our profession. We cannot go to McDonald's and wrap burgers for a living. The police will continue to do what they have to do and we will continue to do what we have to do. None of us will turn over a new leaf and start preaching; it's a simple and inescapable fact of life.
Arttu had suggested that I try to apply for protection with other investigators from abroad that wanted to hear my story. An Italian prosecutor visited me in Oulu prison but I could not provide him with any useful information. Anything about Italy coming from my mouth would have just been hearsay in the eyes of the law.
"I've never been to Italy", I told him. "I don't know anything. Dan, or rather Tan Seet Eng, gave me money for two matches, 60 thousand, Serie A".
As the winter drew near, a Hungarian prosecutor also came to see me in prison. He placed a voice recorder on the table and pressed the REC button.
"Do you have a witness protection program?" I asked.
"Yes we do", the Hungarian prosecutor said.
"OK", I smiled, "work on it and keep me posted".
Acronyms
FA - Football Association
ASEAN - Association of South-East Asia Nations
FIFA - International Federation of Association Football
CAF - Confederation of African Football
CONCACAF - Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football
UEFA - Union of European Football Associations
AFC - Asian Football Confederation
WAFU - West African Football Union
CECAFA - Council for East and Central Africa Football Associations
S-League - Singapore League
FC - Football Club
FF - Football Federation
SC - Soccer Club