The Big Fix (15 page)

 

CHAPTER 26

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ith the data from Perumal's phone and computer in hand, Eaton dispatched two of his investigators to Sharjah, UAE, for the March 26, 2011, match between Kuwait and Jordan. When the syndicate pulled its bets in the second half, this marked FIFA's first victory against the Singapore bosses. “We put them against each other,” Eaton says. “We made them suspicious of each other.” As the FIFA team pressed onward, they watched the fixers professionalize. “They're now operating more like an organized crime syndicate. They're using eight, nine different phones, then throwing them away.”

All turned quiet in Singapore. Dan Tan's attractive young wife answers the door of their condo, a frightened look on her face, saying that he is not at home. The devotees walk 108 times around the Hindu temple where one of Dan Tan's partners is reported to worship, but they say they do not recognize the man from a faint passport photo. At the outdoor Mon Ami Café, in the heat of Little India, where investigators say another of Dan Tan's associates pays out winnings on Monday evenings, all you can find is what's on the menu. There is a faint rustling in the apartment of Anthony Raj Santia, but the door stays closed. Chris Eaton and his FIFA security team have frightened the Singapore syndicate into apparent inactivity.

Despite his successes, Eaton realized that his approach was unsustainable. His investigators wouldn't be able to attend every suspect match in the world. Instead, he would have to institute the kinds of reforms that would fundamentally alter the way that governments and soccer administrators approached the crime of match-­fixing. Eaton realized that match-­fixing was “beyond policing,” that he needed to take an aggressive “counterterrorism approach,” that the process of prosecution and conviction would have no effect on a transnational criminal conspiracy that operated in African villages and the darkened understructure of European stadiums like any neighborhood gang. “They attract, compromise, intimidate,” Eaton says. “There's always a broken kneecap somewhere along the line. This is schoolyard bully stuff on an international scale. And it's time for us to stand up and knock these bastards down.”

As Eaton and his operatives progressed through their investigations in the field, some ­people questioned their methods. What authority did Eaton have to conduct these investigations? He wasn't a cop anymore. When Eaton and his investigators traveled to Singapore, they noticed that the local police surveilled them, shooting pictures of them with their cell phones. Eaton handed his Perumal file to Singapore police in May 2011, but the Singapore police declined to maintain communication with FIFA. Did they have to? Eaton was no longer an Interpol official.

Eaton was also encountering his first frustrations with his employer. FIFA provided Eaton with an annual budget of slightly less than $2 million for security and integrity. Meanwhile, for a VIP party in Rio de Janeiro to celebrate the upcoming World Cup, FIFA budgeted multiples of that. Eaton's irritations spilled over into his public statements. FIFA and Interpol had engaged in an agreement to establish the Anti-­Corruption Training Wing in Singapore, located across from the U.S. embassy in Singapore. Ostensibly, this would educate police in the ways to confront match-­fixing. But Eaton, who had experienced his own share of frustrations while dealing with Singaporean police, was underwhelmed. He said that Singapore was “a match-­fixing academy.” It was an apt comment, perhaps, though misplaced. “Chris said some things that most CEOs would have fired him for,” says Ron Noble, of Interpol. “Because he was so direct, and because the problems reflected on his organization. Most CEOs would have said, ‘cool it.' ” It turned out that the FIFA brass didn't know who they had hired, that Eaton was going to address, head-­on, one of their most sensitive issues.

Eaton's aggressive manner even upset the equipoise back in Lyon, as Noble privately questioned if his former charge, no longer carrying gun and badge, was overstepping his bounds as a private citizen. “The problem with Chris's approach is that he wants to investigate these cases like a law enforcement officer, but without the powers,” Noble says. “He wants a FIFA witness protection program, a FIFA jump team. But it's just not possible.” Noble should have known better, for he was closer to Eaton than almost any other colleague. “Being a police officer is more than Chris's job,” says Eaton's current wife, Joyce. “It's who he is.”

Eaton believed that traditional, long-­term investigations would not defeat fixing, through trials that slogged through the courts. You had to attack the fixing syndicates like you were fighting terrorism. You had to untangle the vast web of financing that underpinned transnational fixing. Cops couldn't cross borders. But he could. “He recognized a crime of global proportion that didn't have the global attention that it required,” Noble says.

Eaton began to press an internal struggle. He wrote to Valcke, urging FIFA to “respond immediately to expanding allegations of criminal international match fixing. . . . It is my strong recommendation that we cannot continue to merely respond using our administrative tools only as these challenges to the integrity of the game emerge.”

Eaton contacted Michael Hershman, whom he knew from his days at Interpol. An expert in corporate governance, Hershman was the president and CEO of the Fairfax Group, a Virginia company that solves management disputes, provides digital forensics, and conducts counterterrorism operations. Hershman was more publicly identified with Transparency International, the Berlin-­based watchdog nongovernmental organization that he cofounded in 1993. With Fairfax, Hershman had advised numerous companies, including GE and Siemens, on the mechanisms of monitoring internal malfeasance. On behalf of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), Fairfax had investigated soccer match-­fixing cases in the Americas.

Over several months in 2011, Eaton and Hershman studied the ways that match-­fixing had infected soccer. They discussed the proactive measures that FIFA might take to push back against the syndicate. They focused on the players, ultimately devising a plan in three parts. A whistle-­blower hotline was the cornerstone of their scheme. Players, coaches, and refs possessed constantly evolving intelligence about fixing. The hot­line would give them a chance to report it. The hotline would be operational twenty-­four hours a day, outsourced to a specialized provider, available through email or phone, in more than 180 languages. Callers could report anonymously.

If the caller chose to reveal his identity, the next component of the program took effect. Eaton and Hershman believed it was essential to provide amnesty to players, refs, and administrators who may be involved, but who wanted to report what they knew. This was a onetime offer to escape censure from FIFA. The third plank of the program was rehabilitation, a counseling program that FIFA would offer to players who provided substantial information about fixing. In cases where the player reporting information was not involved in fixing, FIFA was even prepared to provide financial reward. A new body would oversee all of this, FIFA's Betting Integrity Investigations Task Force. On numerous occasions in the field, Eaton and his operatives had heard sources balk at providing information, citing FIFA's own reputation for internal corruption. The reforms, Hershman and Eaton hoped, would begin to spread a new message.

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hile Eaton drafted this reform program, he received unsettling news at home. His wife, Joyce, an Interpol employee, was bedridden. Twenty years Eaton's junior, Joyce was pregnant, and she was experiencing a series of complications. For months, the life of the fetus was in danger. Eaton worked on his reforms in Zurich during the week, traveling to Lyon only on the weekends to support his wife. Just four months into the pregnancy, French doctors discussed inducing labor. Death had only recently touched his family once again, Eaton's parents passing away in the last year. Now Eaton worried that this new life might not have a chance.

 

CHAPTER 27

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n June 16, 2011, Eaton wrote an email to Wilson Perumal's Finnish attorney. He offered Perumal a chance to reform. Eaton wanted to enlist Perumal to speak to players, educating them about how to avoid being compromised by fixers. This was another component of his anti-­fixing measures. Several days later, Perumal, restricted in jail to paper and pencil, wrote a handwritten response. He opened the letter by apologizing for the “late reply,” sounding like the most mild-­mannered person in the world. “I would like to thank you for considering me as a candidate to work with FIFA to help young players to stay away from corruption,” he wrote. “After the completion of my trial I will be in better circumstances to comply with your request.”

The letters carried the tone of a budding correspondence. Eaton was encouraged. While he pursued his investigations into international match-­fixing, he thought of developing Perumal as a confidential informant. He knew from experience that there were few things as valuable, though also few things that were harder to rely on. On July 19, a Finnish court convicted Perumal of business fraud, sentencing him to two years in prison. He would serve only one.

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n an August morning in 2011, Eaton was finishing a breakfast of bacon and eggs in the café of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, in Bogotá. In an effort to rehabilitate its international image after decades of domination by criminal drug lords, Colombia was hosting the FIFA U-­20 World Cup. Few cities usually bid to host this event, as it required plenty of logistical effort, without much stimulus to the local economy. But the tournament was enough of a priority for FIFA that Sepp Blatter had made the trip from Zurich. Eaton had never met his ultimate boss. But there he was, Blatter, sitting at a neighboring table. Eaton introduced himself. The two men retired to a side room in the café for a private conversation.

When he was away from his handlers, which was seldom, and in an intimate setting, Blatter turned down the lights of the politician and became an interested conversation partner. Eaton was struck by his appeal. He could see that Blatter, with his suave charm, was the embodiment of FIFA's corporate culture, or what it aimed to be. Blatter listened intently as Eaton briefed him on the state of match-­fixing in the game. “It's more serious than most ­people appreciate,” Eaton said. “It needs to be strongly and quickly dealt with.” Then he filled him in on the reforms that he had devised. Blatter offered Eaton all the support he required.

Eaton, the operator, was so focused on communicating the weight of match-­fixing that he didn't realize that he had entered the political realm. That was where genuine concerns came to idle. What could Blatter do, in the end? Outsiders identified him as the face of the organization, but the organization was bigger than he was. Blatter looked tired. He was overwhelmed. The FIFA executive committee would soon appoint an independent governance committee to investigate evidence of internal corruption. Who knew what the committee would discover?

Blatter sat back in his chair. He sighed deeply. He assumed a look of reflection. And he spoke of João Havelange, the Brazilian soccer administrator who had preceded him in the post of FIFA president. Havelange had presided over FIFA for nearly a quarter century, from the mid-­1970s, when the international game was unpolished and unpredictable, until the late 1990s, when corporate interests began to figure out how to streamline the business of soccer, turning the sport into a generator of massive profit. Havelange left the FIFA presidency in 1998, before soccer had become a global gold mine. But he could see it coming. And he understood how this great wealth would activate the thugs and connivers who had always had a hand in the game. Havelange knew that while soccer benefited from its mass global popularity, the game was ultimately ungovernable.

Blatter looked at Eaton. “When I signed the first billion-­dollar TV contract, Havelange told me I was making a mistake,” he said. “ ‘You're opening things up to predators.' ”

Blatter's secretary walked into the café. It was time to head to the stadium. Blatter sat where he was, motionless, as though he hadn't heard. “I'm not a happy president,” he said.