TR EMERITUS

Kind of intriguing, I thought it's innocent until proven guilty by the courts, but yet in this case, the 5 were: a) Handcuffed b) Head shaved c) Prominently photoed by the media Also, one of them was caught in his workplace and requested to the court judge that he be allowed to call his family members to inform them but the judge did not agree but refer the matter to the police ... Since when did the law not allow a 17 year old to call his parent when being detained by the police ??? Also, would the police have acted as swiftly if the graffiti were directed against other political party instead of the ruling party. I thought the police ought to make a clear distinction between PAP as a political party and the government ... I come to this conclusion because much more serious crimes like loansharks disturbing peace of HDB dwellers, police seems inept to do anything about it ... But for this minor vandalising case, they were damn swift to say the least !!! Walter Oh * Submitted by TRE reader.  Read More →

Before I proceed with Part 3 of the exploits of infamous match-fixer Wilson Raj Perumal, I think it prudent that some explanation is given as to how match fixers like him operate. You can read Part 1 of my series on Wilson Raj here and Part 2 here. I am sure Wilson has provided 'theory lessons' in his e-book, but let me also offer another insight after contacting a few sources who wish to remain anonymous. Unlike Wilson Raj, they do not wish to go down in history or become household names. 1. The Bookmakers First things first, let me clarify the most obvious mistake in describing a match fixer. A 'match fixer' is not a 'bookie.' In the whole context of match fixing, the 'bookie' (short for bookmaker) is the key player. Without a 'bookie', a match fixer is useless. The 'bookie' is the guy or organisation that opens 'the tote' or offers odds on matches by 'accepting tickets' (jargon for bets). A 'bookie' can operate legally or illegally. Singapore Pools, Ladbrokes, William Hill are all examples of legitimate bookmakers. However in the Singapore context, all 'bookies' bar Singapore Pools are considered illegal. However Singapore Pools operates on the typical 'kiasu' (Hokkien for scared to lose) mentality. Because of this, many people in Singapore and others in Asia, use offshore bookmakers like IBC and SBO, or illegal bookies (there's a lot in China apparently) to wager. They offer better and fairer odds. In football (or soccer) betting, there's little doubt that Asia is the premier market. In Europe or elsewhere, punters prefer to bet small amounts in return for large odds. For example, a punter in the UK might wager $5-20 Euros on Liverpool to beat Crystal Palace tomorrow by wagering on victory with an exact score, or he might combine that (taking Liverpool to win) with a few others, say Real Madrid to beat Valencia, Man City to beat Aston Villa and Atletico Madrid to beat Levante. On its own, these bets offer little value, since these teams are the favourites, so a $10 Euro bet on Liverpool to win will see the punter win say a measly $3. However if he combines that with the 4 or 5 other matches, he can triple or quadruple his investment. If he backed an underdog or chose a draw somewhere in there, the odds would lengthen further. If the bet was an exact score and certain player to score, again the odds would be very good. However these are called exotic bets, it's not easy to win and more often than not, 1 of the games wouldn't go as planned and as such the punter would lose. In Asia it's different, the average punter would wager say $100-$200 Euros on a single match on the Asian Handicap (AH). The AH is meant to level the playing field by giving the weaker side a 'goal or 2 or sometimes half a goal.' So if Liverpool plays Palace tomorrow, they are favourites to win, but the AH might be say -1.25. That means the game as far as the bet goes starts as Palace 1.25 Liverpool 0. If Liverpool win 1-0 the score reads Palace 1.25 Liverpool 1. So a punter taking Liverpool at $100 Euros, would lose $50 Euros. If the AH was -1.5, he would lose his whole bet as Liverpool would need to win by 2 or more goals (obviously he will also lose if Palace won or drew). This AH makes betting more exciting and fairer and the bigger punters can win large sums by betting larger sums. Rajandren Kurusamy, 'Pal' So how does the bookmaker profit? He doesn't really care who wins, he normally would take a percentage, say 5-15% on each wager. A punter would lose all but will only collect 85% of his winning bet. Of course sometimes, when the favourite is heavily backed, the bookmaker might take a hit if they win, but in the long run, not every favourite wins and just on the percentages alone, they profit. So a match fixer needs a bookmaker to 'throw his tickets' to. In his book Wilson mentions the Lebanon v Singapore game. He says he managed to procure the services of some Lebanese players. The next task was to find a bookmaker offering odds on the game. As this was an international match, betting was available world-wide. So finding a bookmaker was easy. Sometimes a match fixer can also be a bookmaker. Wilson's initial boss, 'Pal' was both a match fixer and bookmaker during the Malaysia Cup days. Depending on what amount was bet on whom, he would then fix the match to ensure the lesser payout won. 2. The Financiers/Investors. For simple terms, the financiers/investors are called the boss. Sometimes if the match fixers have sufficient funds, they finance the whole operation on their own, from paying players and officials and then placing the bets with bookmakers. However most times, they don't have the means. In that Lebanon v Singapore game, Wilson and his 'runner' Simon had chanced upon the Lebanese players at Changi Airport, but they were broke, having failed in a game played in Thailand. So they needed a boss. Now you may ask why would someone want to be a 'boss'? Well, bosses are usually those persons with some means, usually a businessman with a keen eye to make more money. But why a football match? Put it this way,  if you invest in the stock market, there's every chance things can go south if the market gets edgy and you may need some time before making a killing. In a football match, if you have a number players prepared to secure a certain result, in 90 mins, you can make a 'killing'. So a match fixer must convince people with money to be the boss. The boss needs to come out with monies to pay off the players, usually a small percentage would be offered before the match to show his seriousness and the balance paid after the required result was achieved. He would need to provide expenditure to facilitate the fix, like providing accommodation, travel and entertainment. And then most crucially, the amount needed to wager. In that alleged fixed match, Lebanon started out as the favourites for the return game in the Middle East. Wilson found a boss named 'James' to finance the whole operation and place bets. A bet in the millions was made for Singapore to win. In addition, an exotic bet with a large payout was also placed. Singapore did win, and the boss, after paying off costs, still made a huge profit. The exotic bet almost paid out as well - that is Singapore to win by 2 goals in exact scores of 2-0 or 3-1, but alas it finished 2-1. This was a major international game, so bets in the millions was not unexpected. However if a match fixer comes to a boss with a secondary game, say a lower league match in Europe, a bet in the millions would not be possible. Major bookmakers are in touch with each other to flag 'suspicious matches'. Say a Finnish Division 2 game normally only procures $200,000 Euros, wagering more than this, would trigger 'red flags' and bookmakers might close down betting for this game. Therefore a match fixer and his boss, must not get greedy and ensure bets are within the 'normal range'.  They can do this by spreading the bets across a large swathe of legal bookmakers and illegal ones. 3. The Players Having secured the backing of a boss and with availability of bookmakers to 'throw tickets', then it comes to the crunch - the protagonists to make it fall into place - the players and sometimes even officials. Obviously players are the better option since they will play an active part in the match and can procure the desired result. Michael Vana & Abbas Saad, involved in match-fixing in SG. Abbas faced the music but Vana sneaked out and has escaped justice since. There's a misconception that in a 'fixed match' all the players are on 'the job'. Very rarely does this happen, for the simple reason, it's not easy to convince just 3 players to throw a game, what more 11? Not forgetting some can be substituted. Plus the more people that know, the higher the chance of it leaking out. Basically a match fixer needs 3 key players, the goalkeeper, the 'last man' or sweeper and preferably another defender or a striker. At the barest minimum, you will need a goalkeeper and defender. The goalkeeper can be on the take, but if his defenders aren't, they would clear the danger and prevent the ball coming into a position where a goal can be conceded. If the defender is also on the job, he can make a slip and allow the opposing striker in for a goal scoring chance, or he could concede a 'double whammy', concede a penalty and get himself sent off in the process, severely handicapping his team. Sometimes he might even score an own goal. A striker is useful in that he can be directed to hold back and not score, just 'ballooning the ball' or missing a sitter. Ideally a good fixed game will have around 4 to 5 players on the take. The goalkeeper to concede, the last man to let attackers through, another defender to score an own goal or concede a penalty, maybe even get sent off. Then a midfielder to lose of control of the crucial midfield area and allow the opponents to dictate terms, and the striker to miss. Having 4-5 is good in the sense, that is if 1 or 2 of these players are substituted, you can rely on the rest to help secure the result. A good match fixer would brief his charges well and teach them not make things too obvious. A goalkeeper would for example be told to try and show he's doing his job, but helping the cause all the same - e.g.: make the save from opponent A but parry the ball into the path of opponent B, who would have the easy job of tapping into an unguarded net. A defender could be told to appear to mark and harass the attacker but still let him through, or get a less experienced team-mate to mark the star attacker, knowing that he might not be able to do the job, while he himself marks another player. In these instances suspicion cannot be laid at their door. Despite all this, it's not as easy as it sounds, as a former match fixer revealed to me. Most players are new to match-fixing, and you cannot expect too much of them. Therefore it's better to find players of a far weaker team than their opponents. The opponents would naturally win most of the time, these players are just there to ensure it happens by not putting up too much resistance. Only when players have done it a number of times, then you can instruct them to do certain things at certain times or against not so strong opponents. And you can usually only target players in the lower leagues, who earn just a few thousand a month. Players from poorer countries are also susceptible. These include Eastern Europe (like Hungary where Wilson was helping investigations), South America, Africa and Asia. 4. The Match Officials Sometimes it's impossible to procure players. They are from higher leagues that pay well and as such would not be keen on match fixing. Or even if they are, they bet through their own proxies and would not risk dealing with unknown people. Then you have players that are inaccessible, like last year's Concacaf Gold Cup involving North and Central American teams. They are cocooned away from outsiders by tournament officials and are impossible to approach or even if they are, such approaches can be observed by other players or officials. Finally a match fixer or his boss may have limited funds, they cannot afford to spend a few hundred thousands on expenditure to procure and entertain players and then find avenues to place bets in excess of the cost to generate a healthy profit. The next best thing is to get officials. Officials can come in various forms: 1) Referees/Linesmen 2) Coaches/Team Managers 3) The various Football Association executives. Referees are the top option here. In football, the referee is in sole charge of the match. His decisions are final and can very rarely be overturned, even then it's done at a later date well after the bets have been settled. A referee can send players off, he can award penalties and disallow goals. He can overrule his linesmen. He can do everything except score or concede a goal. A linesman is only slightly useful. His biggest role is to raise the flag to deem an attack as offside, or he can signal a foul, even a penalty. But he can also be overruled by the referee. Plus a linesman only takes 1 side of the pitch, so he can only help a defense for 1 half by flagging for offside and then do the reverse for the 2nd half, by helping the same team's attack. Having both linesmen is better but it's really quite hard to fix this way without the referee's involvement. It's best to have all 3 like match-fixer Eric Ding tried to do. Again a 'properly briefed' and experienced referee is far better than a novice. An experienced referee will not be so blatant and he would know what things he can get away with without earning the ire of the Referee Assessor or his supervisory committee. In his book, Wilson relates how he helped certain teams to progress to World Cup 2010 and how he fixed certain 'bigger internationals'. 'D' his former runner revealed that Wilson had managed to procure 1 or 2 FIFA registered referees on his payroll. FIFA referees are the top ones, non FIFA referees can only do local league games, whilst the former can do both local and international games, including friendlies. D says that the referees played some part in the fixed matches that Wilson claims propelled 2 nations, Honduras and Nigeria to WC 2010. However until proven, these can only be termed as allegations, although there was a 'friendly tournament' held in Turkey, which Wilson helped his then boss, Dan Tan organise. In the games, the referee awarded a series of penalties to ensure the scoreline was high, meaning the AH for the over/under total goals went the way they had wagered. But this was done too obviously and the plot was later unravelled. In essence a 'good' (bribed) referee, would favour Team A (usually the stronger team ) over Team B. He would choose an incident in the box, to award Team A a penalty. If the strict letter of the Law is applied, every game can see maybe anywhere from 5-10 penalties, but discretion is used. A penalty is in essence a direct free-kick but within the penalty area. Anywhere else, a push, shove, a not so clean tackle, a tug at the shirt or shorts, would result in a free-kick for the opponents, but in the penalty area, referees are slower to punish these as it would result in a disproportionate number of penalties. Only blatant fouls and hand-balls, goal scoring opportunities denied and violent conduct in the penalty area will result in unquestionable penalties, but these are rare because teams are trained not to concede these. However a referee has the discretion to punish the former with penalties if he so decides, and he's rarely sanctioned for using his powers. A 'good referee' would choose just such an incident to favour the team he's been tasked to help in securing the desired result. A 'good referee' will also award the team a good number of free-kicks in dangerous positions outside the box. He will flash his 'yellow cards' at defenders, making them vulnerable to picking up a 2nd booking and get sent off, giving the opponents a huge numerical advantage. And finally, he can choose to protect or oppose a defending or attacking team. If he's supporting Team A, any small foul by Team B's attackers will be whistled. And when Team A attacks, he'll be slow to show the same support to Team B's defenders. And he also can rule out a goal scored by Team B by signalling a foul on Team A's defenders, in the build up to the goal. 5. Coaches/Managers If a match fixer doesn't have players or referees, the next choice is the coaching staff. Preferably you need the coach or manager responsible for team selection and tactics. Forget about those in the top divisions in Europe. These guys are well paid and would scoff at bribes even those in the hundreds of thousands. They can easily earn these amounts on their own. The same goes for the national team managers of almost all countries. No, you have to go for coaches of lower division teams. However sometimes you get lucky, say you had Player A on your payroll many years ago whilst he was playing. Now that he has retired, he has gone into coaching. After earning and upgrading his badges and having some years of experience, he's able to land the main coaching position of some of the bigger clubs and countries, or even the reserve or youth team coaching positions. There's a number of major reserve leagues and youth tournaments where betting is readily available, like it was alleged in his e-book involving Olympic teams. With Player A now becoming Coach A, and you having already built up a friendship in the past, it's easier to procure his help to fix matches. He can select an inexperienced squad to face a strong opponent, knowing full well that a heavy defeat is a foregone conclusion. Or he can use poorer tactics that could help in your fix. Maybe even take off his best players in the match and make the desired result easier. 6. Football Association Executives Wilson is accused of having bribed officials of a number of African countries, notably Zimbabwe, where his involvement with the FA President saw her being dismissed from her position and become subject to criminal investigations. With her help, he arranged a 'friendly' in Malaysia, where the team fielded was not the real national team of Zimbabwe but lower inexperienced club players masquerading as them. With the backing of a national association, it becomes easy to arrange friendlies and dubious tournaments such as the Turkish one. It's not really too difficult to get in touch with associations. Wilson and Dan Tan opened up companies masquerading as match organisers and wrote to the various associations in Africa, where officials earn a pittance compared to their compatriots in the West. Or through contacts there, he arranged to meet them. Offers were made to send their national teams for friendlies free of charge. Since these associations are poor, such offers were too good to turn down. With the backing of an official association, he could then write to other national associations like Malaysia, Thailand, even in the Middle East, CONCACAF and Europe, stating these national teams were keen to travel for a friendly. By then a match fixer would be very close to these officials, plying them with gifts or offering them bribes to ensure their countries will honour these friendlies. With officials in hand, it became easy to secure their help to ensure their teams (now given a free trip, accommodation, match allowances), go and perform as directed in the friendlies. If they do so, an even bigger bonus awaited them. Some of these officials have enormous clout even politically back home, so it's more likely the teams would follow instructions. It needn't be in the form of throwing games or bribing individual players, they could simply be told to go all out or take it easy on the hosts. In his book, Wilson alleges he paid Mozambique to go all out against Tunisia and thus assist Nigeria to qualify (Tunisia needing only a draw, lost 0-1 to already eliminate Mozambique, while Nigeria beat Kenya 3-2 away with a late goal to leap frog them). The same was done to Honduras' opponents in the CONCACAF region. However, the associations involved have strenuously denied the allegations. Some are even considering taking legal action. There's another simpler way to get national associations to assist without offering any bribes even. With fake credentials as a football agent or as a genuine match organiser, a match fixer can write to a number of national associations and ask them if they are keen to play friendlies, preferably in Asia. Eg: a match fixer can write to the FAS in Singapore or FAM in Malaysia and say that African or CONCACAF teams are keen to play a friendly at the National Stadium or Bukit Jalil. Maybe even a stronger nation like Slovenia, Bosnia, New Zealand or Peru. Once Singapore or Malaysia agree, they would normally arrange for things like expenditure and accommodation. Their opponents might even finance their own travel. All the match fixer needs to do is be the middle man and get the game planned. Finally after befriending the visiting team, he could pass a gentle word to their coach or association executives and say, 'Hey, this friendly is held in honour of the host's greatest player who just passed away, or it's a big event like their national day or King's birthday, or maybe the President will be in attendance. If you guys can, maybe don't humiliate the hosts too much. Your team is much stronger so maybe a narrow 1 goal victory or draw, will be appreciated and maybe they will invite you again,' Or if the team is on a tour of a few countries, he could tell them after they convincingly win their first 2 games, and have achieved their set targets of giving players exposure and getting ready for a big tournament, to go slow in the final match. He could simply say, if you guys keep on winning by such big margins, it will be hard for other teams from your region to be invited here. It all depends on the match fixer's powers of persuasion. He must broach the topic subtly and not be seen as trying to fix the game. In fact he must not even offer any bribes or gifts. It must be seen as a genuine and reasonable request. He could even use the opposite tactic, if say he got a strong team or club with star players over. He could tell them, 'Hey people here are paying good money to watch this match, and a number of sponsors have stepped up to the plate. Please ensure that your star players play and the team give a good account of themselves. It doesn't matter if you win big, so long as these stars play and preferably score, the fans will go away happy. But if you don't field a strong side or the stars and struggle to win, in future it'll be hard to invite similar teams over.' Armed with this information, the match fixer can contact a boss to 'throw tickets' with the bookmakers. Or he could sell the 'info' on how the visiting will play to his contacts in return for a cut of their winnings. Better still if he has money himself, he could simply go wager himself. No bribes were offered, so he can't be accused of match fixing, the teams themselves aren't aware that a fix is on. Even if the whole caper comes into the open, this charge will be very hard to prove. 7. Information/Intelligence Sometimes a match fixer doesn't need to bribe players and officials to do or omit to do certain things. He just needs information on how the team will perform in a certain match or what their tournament expectations are. All he needs is a source that's close to the team and very reliable. This can be from a player, coach, official or from a friend and family member of 1 of them. He might be able to know who's injured and unlikely to play, or who's assumed injured but fully recovered. He can find out their game plan, maybe they are going to be defensive and play for a draw. Or in a big tournament, having secured qualification, they are treating their final game as a training match or conserving energy. Marcel Desailly, the former French international, admitted whilst at Chelsea that sometimes players find it hard to focus against a weaker team like say Leicester in a League match, when they have a big Champion's League game against say Barcelona in mid-week. They might just do the minimum to ensure victory over Leicester (and thus unlikely to overcome the handicap), and focus on the Barcelona game. In Manchester City's final league match under the ownership of former Thai PM, Thaksin Shinawatra, the team went to Middlesbrough and got thumped 8-1. Apparently the players were so fed up with how the club was run, they just didn't have any desire left. It's this kind of information, that could prove hugely beneficial to a match fixer. Even at the highest levels, dodgy stuff can happen. Take France's disinterested performances in WC 2010. Apparently there was a huge rift between players and the coaches. They just couldn't seem to play as a team and were eliminated despite being fancied to top the group and advance to the knock-out rounds. Match-fixing is very global, very often match-fixers find out who's fixing matches in other places. The trick is to get acquainted with your fellow fixers and build trust. So a fixer who's operating in France might learn of the issues within the national team and sell/share this info with another fixer in another country, in return for the latter sharing tips when he's doing games or has info within his own sphere. Conclusion There's so much more, and like Wilson I could probably also write a book. But I think these 7  points should suffice. Basically match-fixing is not extremely hard to do. It requires some cunning and some 'cojones' and most of all finding the right people, be they bosses, players, coaches, officials or executives, not to mention the bookmakers who will offer bets. A match-fixer like Wilson must be able to talk and charm people especially players. Sometimes he might need to intimidate them even. The real guard must be from players themselves. If they are indebted, greedy, in financial difficulty or associate with the wrong people who are out to make use of them, the match-fixer will always be lurking. Professional football at the top levels looks very lucrative, but for every Cristiano Ronaldo earning millions a month, there're thousands surviving on less than $1000-2000 Euros a month. And this is a very short career. Any serious injury can end your career or make your dreams of greatness disappear, instead you end up plying the backwaters in some distant lower local league, earning barely enough. That's why match fixers can operate and have been operating for years on end. If they can get close to these players, they can offer them sums in excess of what they could earn in a whole month or year. And a smart fixer, will not force players to do stuff in each and every game. He'll do it say 4-5 times in a season spanning 20-30 games, making detection impossible as the fixed games would be termed as the occasional sub-par performance. And there's no incentive for players to confess. Firstly they will be turning on their own team-mates and if they admit to fixing, they themselves would get banned and not be able to find future teams prepared to take them in. Furthermore the evidence is hard to verify, basically it's their word against the fixer's or their fellow players. Moreover the fixer might be using a proxy or operating from overseas and as such hard to be detained by local authorities. Like a former New York Mafiosi once said about bribing basketball and American football college players, "I've been to jail and can survive another stint, can the player afford to? I'm the career criminal, my reputation might even be enhanced if I'm caught, what about his?' However despite what Wilson has confessed and I've written here, people should not come to the conclusion that football itself is 'dirty'. The percentage of corrupt players, coaches and officials, even match-fixers themselves is very small. It's easy to assume after reading this that every game that produces a shock, even dodgy result is 'fixed'. It's easy to assume every mistake made by a player or referee in any game has a sinister ring to it. The fact is it's not, the ball is round as they say and football is unpredictable. On their best days, even the minnows can beat the giants. Players age, lose form and opponents are sometimes more psychologically prepared. As a former Wilson associate observed, 'You need to understand the betting markets first and then observe the match with a trained eye, before you can tell whether something fishy is taking place. If a game was fixed, eventually amongst the 'fixing circle' the truth will come out. Unless some joker like Wilson decides to tell-all, it will forever remain a secret amongst this shadowy group. Anyone can make assumptions, but assumptions can never be certified as the gospel truth.' I will resume with Wilson's saga in due course, but I think this insight is crucial in explaining how he managed to do what he did. You're free to share this on FB and elsewhere, and offer comments or ask questions, and I'll try to answer if I can get the sources to assist. Sir Nelspruit * The author blogs at Anyhow Hantam. Related: Tales of the Kelong King – Wilson Raj Perumal – (1) Tales of a match fixer – Wilson Raj Perumal – (2)  Read More →

Singapore is planning centres outside the city for their migrant workers. (5 May)   Singapore plans to build more recreation centres in the suburbs to draw migrant labourers away from the city after a rare riot in the congested Little India district last year, a report said Monday. The multi-million dollar centres are the latest in a series of government measures to better manage areas where foreign workers congregate after the rampage by South Asian labourers on December 8 injured 39 people and saw 25 vehicles destroyed. The Straits Times newspaper said the four new centres will be built next to dormitories sited in industrial areas away from the city centre and will serve as alternative gathering points for workers on their rest days. Read more: au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/23237091/  Read More →