Inside The Fixing - How A Gang Battered Soccer's Frail Integrity

6/2/2014 Inside the Fixing: How a Gang Battered Soccers Frail Integrity- NYTimes.
com
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/02/sports/soccer/match-fixing-gang-strikes-at-soccers-fragile-legitimacy.html?rref=sports/soccer&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Soccer&action=click&region=FixedLeft&p 1/7
http://nyti.ms/1py0rjm
SOCCER | RIGGED: PART 2 OF A TWO-PART SERIES | NYT NOW
Inside the Fixing: How a Gang Battered Soccers Frail Integrity
A New York Times investigation of match fixing ahead of the 2010 World Cup gives an
unusually detailed look at the ease with which professional gamblers can fix matches.
READ PART 1
By DECLAN HILL JUNE 1, 2014
ROVANIEMI, Finland A man arrived at the police station here in 2011 with an unusual tip. He told
the police that a Singaporean man was fixing matches with the local professional soccer team. The
police were incredulous.
This city on the Arctic Circle is known as the hometown of Santa Claus. It boasts a theme park with
reindeer, elves and jolly St. Nicks. It is also a popular destination for Asian couples looking to make love
under the Northern Lights. Rovaniemi is known for many things, but not for organized crime.
Then after a few days, we started to realize that we had something real, said Arttu Granat, a police
detective at the time who hunts moose on the weekends. So we started to build up the surveillance
team.
The detectives soon discovered that Wilson Raj Perumal, a match fixer from Singapore, was toiling
away in Rovaniemi, working with several players, unbeknown to the coach. Mr. Perumal was considered
6/2/2014 Inside the Fixing: How a Gang Battered Soccers Frail Integrity- NYTimes.com
a risk by his associates in a Singaporean match-rigging syndicate, so the group had sent a representative
to Finland to tip off the police, Mr. Granat said.
Mr. Perumal was arrested and given a choice: Talk or be sent back to Singapore, where his
punishment might be severe.
Mr. Perumal talked. His account along with confidential documents, judicial investigations and
interviews with people with knowledge of the syndicates operations revealed how pervasively illicit
gambling operations have infected global soccer, leaving the legitimacy of what fans see on the field
more fragile than ever.
The match-fixing syndicate Mr. Perumal worked for very effectively exploited soccers
vulnerabilities. According to European police investigators, the syndicate has manipulated hundreds of
professional soccer matches around the world by identifying players and referees ripe for bribery
particularly in countries that pay low wages.
The syndicates schemes often succeeded with apparent ease, including the rigging of exhibition
games in the lead-up to the 2010 World Cup, raising concerns about the ability of officials to thwart
match fixing.
The Apprentice Fixers
Mr. Perumal learned his trade in an informal school for match fixers in Singapore, along with Tan
Seet Eng, a Singaporean man known widely as Dan Tan. In the early 1990s, they would gather in the
stadiums where illegal bookmakers would take bets on the Malaysian-Singaporean soccer league.
The fixers were so successful that a Malaysian Cabinet minister estimated that they succeeded in
fixing more than 70 percent of the leagues matches. The corruption was so bad that the Malaysian-
Singaporean league collapsed.
At the bottom of the fixers hierarchy were runners: the go-betweens for the players and the fixers.
Above the fixers were influential businessmen with the money to back the more expensive fixes and the
protection muscle to make sure the network ran smoothly.
In the syndicates early days, there was one king, known as Uncle Frankie, a legend among match
fixers. He was a Chinese-Indonesian businessman who sometimes used the name Frankie Chung, but his
real name could not be confirmed. He knew that the global expansion of soccer presented lots of fixing
opportunities. Uncle Frankie would go to major international tournaments, like the World Cup, and try
to bribe players and referees.
Uncle Frankie taught Mr. Tan and Mr. Perumal the dirty secret of international soccer: Many teams
and their personnel are poor, so they often have players, coaches and referees open to bribes.
In every competition you find gamblers around, said Kwesi Nyantakyi, president of the Ghana
Football Association. Yes, every competition. Every competition, they are there. It is done all the time in
major competitions. In all the major tournaments, World Cup, Cup of Nations.
The gamblers are not Africans, he added. They are Europeans and Asians. So they have a lot of
money to bet on these things.
With its talented players with little money, Ghana is one of the countries that fixers frequently target
at international tournaments, Mr. Nyantakyi said. So he was not surprised when, in 2007, it was
discovered that there had been an attempt to fix an international match involving Ghanas celebrated
goalkeeping coach, Abukari Damba, who was working with the Singaporean fixers.
After some players turned him in, Mr. Damba confessed and said in a Ghana Football Association
hearing that he had worked with the Singaporean fixers for 10 years.
Enter the Croatians
Mr. Perumal joined the international match-fixing group in 2008. In his interrogation cell in 2011,
he charted the syndicates organization for Mr. Granat and other Finnish police officers. It had
European partners and Chinese backers who supplied money allegedly laundered through casinos in
Macau.
The match-fixing syndicate was a criminal network, according to European police investigators.
Europeans supplied compliant referees, players and coaches; Mr. Tan and the Singaporeans provided
access to the vast, unregulated sports gambling market in Asia.
If the match fixers had only the referee on the take, they would say it was a one-star fix. In this case,
the Asian syndicate would bet a smaller amount. If the local fixers had the entire team and the
officiating crew on the take, it was called a five-star fix, and the syndicate would wager far more.
This system was devised at a meeting in a hotel room in Vienna in September 2008 between the
Asian syndicate run by Mr. Tan and Ante and Milan Sapina, two Berlin-based Croatian brothers who
had a vast network of corrupt soccer players, referees and coaches. The Sapinas have twice been
convicted of match fixing in Germany and are in prison there.
Together, they fixed hundreds of soccer matches around the world, targeting nearly every league
from the prestigious Champions League and World Cup qualifying matches to obscure, low-level
matches. Once the Sapina brothers had persuaded their contacts to fix matches, Mr. Tan could then
place bets on the Asian sports gambling market, the biggest in the world. Because much of the Asian
market is underground, estimates of its size vary greatly. Patrick Jay, a senior executive of the Hong
Kong Jockey Club, one of the largest government-controlled gambling companies in the world,
estimated that the Asian market handled $1 trillion in wagering.
It is huge, Mr. Jay said. FIFA boasts about how much money they make every four years with the
World Cup. You know what they call $4 billion in the illegal betting markets in Asia? Thursday.
680 Suspicious Matches
Terry Steans, a former FIFA investigator who now runs a sports security company in the United
Kingdom, said the syndicate of Mr. Tan and Mr. Perumal moved fixing to another level from the early
days of simply approaching players in hotel rooms.
They organized tournaments where they invited entire teams no one watched the games, they
were not televised, Steans said. The whole thing was set up for the gambling markets.
In February 2011, the syndicate orchestrated one of the strangest tournaments. It invited the
national teams of Estonia, Bulgaria, Bolivia and Latvia to Antalya, Turkey. The tournaments games
were played in near-empty stadiums. They were not televised. Yet they attracted millions of dollars in
bets on the Asian market.
All seven goals were scored on penalty kicks all awarded by referees the syndicate had chosen and
flown in.
For sheer nerve, it has to rate high up there, Mr. Steans said. They hired the stadium. Would not
sell tickets. Would not allow fans in. No television. Four international teams. Bought the referees and
made money on the gambling market. It is pretty brazen.
FIFA eventually barred the referees.
In February 2013, Europol, the European Unions police intelligence agency, said the results of 680
matches worldwide from 2008 to 2011, including World Cup qualifying matches and European
Champions League matches, were considered suspicious. Mr. Tans group did most of this work,
investigators said.
In Italy, Mr. Tan was so successful working with Balkan associates who had connections with
Italian organized crime that more than 20 Italian professional soccer teams were investigated for match
fixing. A senior investigator of Italys National Organized Crime Task Force labeled Mr. Tan as the No. 1
wanted man in Italy.
For their part, Dan Tan and his group constitute a criminal network that is both dangerous and
quick to violence in case of anyone who breaks their rules, an Italian prosecutor wrote in his statement.
This is stated in the testimony of one of the members who said it takes very little in the case of treason
by one of the group to risk their murder.
The European investigators determined that Mr. Tans syndicate also managed to fix matches
played in the United States. In 2010, it persuaded a majority of El Salvadors national team to throw a
game against D.C. United of Major League Soccer as well as an international match against the United
States in Miami. Many of the Salvadoran players were subsequently barred for life.
The Syndicate Lives On
In 2011, Mr. Perumal was found guilty of corruption in Finland and was sentenced to two years. He
was released early. In late April, he was arrested again in Finland because, the police said, he had
returned to the fixing business and had an outstanding international arrest warrant. He faces
extradition to Singapore.
Last year, Singaporean law enforcement officials arrested Mr. Tan. However, he is in indefinite
detention and may not stand trial. The scale of his match fixing may never be fully revealed.
Their arrests are not expected to stanch match fixing in Asia. Mr. Granat, the detective who helped
disrupt Mr. Perumals exploits in northern Finland, said he ultimately recognized the groups
extraordinary reach.
I remember I started to take it seriously when Wilson Raj Perumal had been in prison for a week
and he told me, This particular game next week will be fixed,' Mr. Granat said. He was in custody,
and he could still tell me these things.
In a recent interview in Kuala Lumpur, an associate of the syndicates discussed the groups next
phase. Dan Tan and the others are locked up, but the betting cartel has just carried on, he said,
speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
They have new people to do their work. There is no stopping them.
A version of this article appears in print on June 2, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Inside the Fixing: How a
Gang Battered Soccers Frail Integrity.
2014 The New York Times Company

Inside The Fixing - How A Gang Battered Soccer's Frail Integrity

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Inside The Fixing - How A Gang Battered Soccer's Frail Integrity

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

6/2/2014 Inside the Fixing: How a Gang Battered Soccers Frail Integrity- NYTimes.

Potrebbero piacerti anche