Singapore authorities last year placed the alleged leaders of a global match-fixing ring operating from the city-state in indefinite detention after uncovering plans to rig the ongoing FIFA World Cup, a book released yesterday claims.
In his book, Foul! The Inside Story of Singapore Match Fixers, Zaihan Mohamed Yusof, a Singaporean investigative journalist who has reported extensively on match-fixing in soccer, details how he learned of the now-crippled ring’s plans from government officials and a sports corruption investigator.
“The syndicate had been posturing, setting up a base of corrupt football players and officials through matches played overseas in national leagues and international friendlies,” Zaihan quotes an unnamed senior Singaporean official as saying in the book. “When the 2014 World Cup comes, all they will be doing is collecting [their betting earnings].”
“Something had to be done to stop them... We couldn’t take the chance,” another official was quoted as saying.
Zaihan also cites Michael Pride, head of operations at Australia-based match-fixing investigators SI Sports Intelligence as saying: “This syndicate allegedly sets up fixes six months ahead of major matches. From source information, they were allegedly gearing up for the World Cup.”
Singapore’s police and anticorruption agency in September last year rounded up 14 alleged members of a global match-fixing syndicate, in one of the biggest crackdowns yet on corruption in soccer.
Authorities subsequently used a special law that allows indefinite detention to hold four key ring leaders , including alleged kingpin Dan Tan, also known as Tan Seet Eng.
Officials say the indefinite detention is necessary because witnesses fear reprisals if they testify in court. Tan, a reclusive Singaporean businessman, first came into prominence when convicted fixer Wilson Raj Perumal, also a Singaporean, was arrested and jailed in Finland in 2011 for fixing top-tier games there.
Perumal had told prosecutors in Finland he was a double-crossed associate of Tan’s, who has also been named in several European match-fixing investigations.
In a rare media interview in 2011, Tan protested his innocence and said he was mystified about why he had been tagged as a match-fixer.
In the book, Zaihan said Tan was living a “fairly visible lifestyle” early last year, even after he came into focus in the media as an alleged match-fixing mastermind.
The journalist recalled watching Tan, believed to be 50 years old, play a match for local amateur side Oxley City.
“For a fleeting 15 minutes, he came on the pitch and played as though he were a star striker. Tan’s love for the beautiful game was apparent,” Zaihan writes.
Interviews with Tan’s associates revealed he learned the trade in the early 1990s as an understudy to a veteran match-fixer, said Zaihan, a journalist with Singapore’s the New Paper.
Ironically, Tan was nicknamed “Ah Blur” by associates, a colloquial term used in Singapore to refer to people who are slow to catch on.
Zaihan’s book follows a tell-all e-book by Perumal, penned by Italian investigative journalism Web site Invisible Dog and released in April.
Perumal claims in the book that he influenced soccer games at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
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