Free Kelong Kings: Confessions of the world's most prolific match-fixer by Wilson Raj Perumal, Alessandro Righi, Emanuele Piano

to number two in the boss's mind. He knew that I
was on par with him; both of us had the same criminal mentality so he
didn't want me around and was poisoning my relationship with Pal.
    "This Wilson
guy is dangerous", he probably told Pal. "He can sell
information on this and that. He will leak you out".
    Pal had decided not
to engage my services and I was not about to follow him and hump his
leg or beg him to hire me so I turned a blind eye to it all.
    In 1994, Pal
promoted Michal from the local league to the Singapore Lions so that
he could compete in the Malaysia Cup. Pal was paying him generously
for his loyalty. I tried calling Michal once while he was playing in
the Lions; within a handful of minutes, I received a call from Pal.
    "Why did you
call Michal?" he barked.
    "Fuck", I
replied. "I just called to speak to him".
    "Fuck you",
he threatened. "You better not call him anymore".
    There were, of
course, players in the Malaysia Cup who were neither corrupt nor
corruptible, either because they were very religious or because they
had very strong principles. I remember one such player, Alan
Davidson, an Australian footballer who played for Pahang FA, one of
the Malaysian state teams. Davidson was the best defender in the
entire Malaysia Cup but he happened to stand in Pal's way. Pal had
decided that Singapore was going to win the 1994 Malaysia Cup final
against Davidson's team. He had many of Pahang's players under his
influence but not the Australian defender so, during the semi-final
between Pahang and Kedah in Alor Setar, Malaysia, with the help of a
complacent referee, Pal managed to get Davidson sent off and suspended in view of the final. Davidson's absence
from the field in the final made the job easier for his corrupt
team-mates; they accomplished their mission and lost 4-0 to
Singapore, which came away with a stylish victory before 81 thousand
ignorant spectators and millions of viewers back home who assumed
that the cup had been won fairly. In order to avoid unexpected
setbacks, Pal had paid both the Pahang players to concede goals and
the Singapore players to fight like real lions in order to take the
cup home. One of them was the Australian striker Abbas Saad, who
received money directly from his teammate Michal and delivered a
hat-trick for Singapore during the match.
    But celebrations
were cut short by a wave of arrests for match-fixing. Five days after
the final, dozens of footballers were apprehended both in Malaysia by
local police and in Singapore by the Corrupt Practices Investigation
Bureau (CPIB). Law enforcement officials were compelled to act
against the rampant corruption in the Malaysia Cup after a Chinese
evening newspaper revealed the final scores on the eve of the
matches. The paper had gone so far as to announce details of who was
going to get a red card during the games. Over one hundred players
were arrested in Malaysia; some were suspended by the Malaysian FA
and some were even banished to remote islands and rural areas. Among
the Singapore players charged was Michal, Pal's protege. Pal himself
was also picked up by the CPIB and turned prosecution witness to
avoid being charged.
    Michal proved to be
a tough nut to crack; he sat in silence in the interrogation room for
over 17 hours; he didn't speak one word. Eventually, once Pal's statements were on the
record, Michal had to give in. Bail for his release was set at half a million Singapore dollars and he was in dire need of urgent
assistance. Michal pleaded with his old team-mates, like Fandi Ahmad,
but none were willing to help. Fortunately for him, Pal knew a former
police inspector named Maniam who sometimes took part in our poker
sessions. He gave Maniam half a million dollars in cash and asked him
to bail Michal out. Pal then hired some people to ferry Michal to
Indonesia by boat; whether it was a speedboat or a fishing boat, I
cannot say, but somehow they smuggled Michal out of Singapore. From
Indonesia, Michal was supposed to fly to