The Big Fix (16 page)

 

CHAPTER 28

FIFA HEADQUARTERS, ZURICH, JANUARY 2012

O
n January 10, 2012, Chris Eaton addressed a select group of reporters in a conference room at FIFA's Zurich headquarters. The time had come to announce the reform program that he and Hershman had developed. Sitting at the head table, Eaton read from prepared remarks: “By now, it should be absolutely clear to even the most optimistic that we are dealing with globally roaming organized crime, and that it is undermining many international sports at all levels. It is unquestionably rapacious and opportunistic.”

As proof of his claims, Eaton displayed several slides on the screen behind him. These were copies of emails and letters that Perumal had sent to soccer federation officials. Eaton delineated what he called “long-­term institutional answers”:

Strong match and competition regulations

A clear understanding of who, in the matrix of sporting organizations, is responsible and accountable

A rigid compliance to due-­diligence and sound business practices in all financial arrangements

Fit and proper persons tests, especially for match and player agents

Diligent monitoring and oversight of matches and the administration of them

A strong investigative capability when prevention protections do not work

Eaton closed his remarks by introducing the tenets and substance of the new program. The initiative would go into effect on February 1, 2012, beginning with the hanging of posters in stadium locker rooms around the world. This wasn't a solution to match-­fixing. But it was the first practical step that FIFA had ever taken toward fighting it. Eaton had managed a rare feat. Since he didn't fit the FIFA culture, he was beginning to change it to fit him. He had achieved something else of surprise. While FIFA's reputation suffered from continual allegations of internal corruption, with his reforms Eaton had managed to make FIFA look like the paragon of moral integrity, if only for one day in the news cycle. With the newly appointed Independent Governance Committee casting a shadow over the organization, this press conference shone rare brightness on FIFA. Eaton had turned a negative issue into positive publicity. FIFA had finally begun to take proactive measures to combat the manipulation of its matches.

T
he day following the press conference, January 11, Eaton's internal office phone rang. Marco Villiger was calling.

After the two exchanged pleasantries, Villiger's tone deepened. “Chris, I have some bad news,” he said. “Blatter and Valcke have decided to suspend your reforms.” Eaton couldn't believe what he was hearing. They had just held the press conference. There were articles in that day's newspapers announcing the reforms. The whistle-­blower hotline was set to go live in a ­couple of days. “We're forming the Independent Governance Committee,” Villiger continued, “and this is one of the areas that they're going to refer to the committee for consideration. This is just how we have to proceed.”

“You know I'm disappointed,” Eaton replied. “You know how much work has gone into this. I understand the decision. But it doesn't stop me from being disappointed. Because these reforms are important.”

Eaton searched for justifiable motivation in the decision of his bosses. Michael Hershman, who would go on to sit on the Independent Governance Committee, couldn't see any. “In my judgment, there was no good reason for FIFA not to have implemented a program at that time,” he says. Ultimately, Eaton understood that FIFA's increasing preoccupation with its internal troubles would weaken his match-­fixing mandate. Had he overreached from the beginning?

Eaton had relearned an old lesson, that even though he might be right, politics would always dictate meaningful decisions. On the range, the lawman applied the power of the state in the way that he believed suited the environment. In society, Eaton knew that he was ultimately beholden to an organization that by its mercantile nature advanced priorities that he did not share. It didn't matter what was right. It mattered what was expedient. However much he had enjoyed the moment of his innovative successes, the moment was now over. When faced with a choice, FIFA had chosen predictably. “My concern was that outward corruption was far more endemic and far more damaging to football than internal corruption,” Eaton says. “External corruption is far more dangerous to football than what happens to FIFA. Football is bigger than FIFA.”

Later that day, January 11, shortly after his phone call with Villiger, Eaton drafted a letter. Addressed to Jerome Valcke, it read, in part: “Please accept this memo as notice of my resignation under the terms of my employment contract.”

E
aton stayed on at FIFA for two months, handing over active investigations to his successor. The next FIFA security chief was a longtime cop named Ralf Mutschke, a German who had also been an Interpol director. Ron Noble arranged his appointment at FIFA, as he had done for Eaton. The similarities ended there. A buttoned-­up company man, Mutschke focused on security rather than match-­fixing. Unlike Eaton, Mutschke was an enthusiastic fan of soccer. Also unlike Eaton, Mutschke, a German, had exhibited no tendency of outdistancing his mandate.

As his days at FIFA dwindled, Eaton's thoughts began to wander. Joyce delivered a healthy baby two weeks after his resignation. The boy was named Roy, after Eaton's father. At sixty years old, Eaton was a father for the sixth time. He began to think that maybe this was the direction he should pursue, fatherhood and retirement at once, an active stasis.

He continued touring the conference circuit, dutifully sounding the horn for the fight against match-­fixing, underscoring the financial scope and global nature of the problem. The influential figures of the soccer world, the grandiloquent and political, gave Eaton the cold shoulder. They looked on this Australian cowboy in their midst, this outsider, then laughed privately with one another. Eaton's hope in the possibilities of the FIFA job had been dashed, and he was slipping into irrelevance.

Eaton didn't have the powers of a cop, nor the authority of representing FIFA. What he had gained was his own independent stature. If FIFA's internal review, the battle for its corporate image, had prevented it from battling match-­fixing to its full capability, then who was looking after the integrity of the game? UEFA? England's Football Association? The standard-­bearers for the game had largely avoided the issue. National governments and police were focusing on domestic prosecutions. There was no one in a position of authority and influence who vigorously fought to understand the international nature of the fixing syndicates, and how to upend them.

Chris Eaton didn't even
like
soccer. And this may have been the difference. His emotions and finances and identity weren't entwined with the game's fortunes. He had no stake in the game. He had a stake in the law. While others had spent lifetimes in the game, and were thus prone to making allowances for its shortcomings, as though for an impolite relative, Eaton couldn't. In just two years' time, Eaton had become soccer's moral authority.

W
hen Eaton and his corps of operatives mapped the Singapore fixing syndicate, he learned that this was only the veneer of fixing, its public face, fixing's marketing department. The power and impetus behind fixing was the manipulation of the sportsbooks, both legal and illegal, all over the world, though primarily in Asia, as Chinese organized crime overwhelmed Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, and anywhere they could push out the competition.

“I could see that this was no longer about sport,” Eaton says. “This was about organized crime. Sport happened to be the vehicle. I saw for the first time a whole new moneymaking opportunity for transnational organized crime.” He saw the unique advantage that fixing presented established criminal enterprises. When they moved drugs or prostitutes, for example, they often did so over international borders, risking detection. Fixing presented almost no risk. It was digital money, and almost entirely untraceable. “This was going to be the most dangerous income stream for organized crime in modern history,” Eaton says. “This would have cashed up organized crime in a way that nothing ever had before. Also, terrorism has always copied organized crime, often copying the way they make their money. How long before they would say, ‘match-­fixing isn't a bad deal'?”

In March 2012, as his time at FIFA came to a close, Eaton traveled to Doha, Qatar, where initial planning was under way for the 2022 World Cup. The soccer world was just getting to know the first Middle Eastern World Cup host. Various elements in Qatari society were eager to emit all the right signals. Mohammed Hanzab, a former lieutenant colonel in the Qatari army, had recently established an organization called the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS). Hanzab had created the ICSS as a nongovernmental, nonprofit foundation to provide expertise in the security of major sporting events. He hired a longtime German police officer, Helmut Spahn, to run the organization.

Eaton led a confidential discussion about match-­fixing at an ICSS conference on March 14. At the close of the day's session, Hanzab invited Eaton to lunch at L'wzaar, a seafood restaurant in Doha's Katara cultural village. There were a few dozen ­people in their group, and Hanzab seated Eaton close to him for the meal. Eaton explained to Hanzab that focusing on the manipulation of the betting market would pay greater dividends than arresting players. Hanzab, wearing a spotless dishdash, listened intently. Toward the close of lunch, Eaton mentioned discreetly that he would be leaving FIFA.

Hanzab looked surprised. After lunch, he followed Eaton outside. The weather was mild, a far cry from the sweltering heat of summer. Hanzab asked Eaton: “Would you be interested in coming to work with us at the ICSS after you leave FIFA?”

Eaton thought it over. It didn't hurt that Hanzab's offer was backed by the great gas fields of Qatar. Eaton also saw a position at the ICSS as a way to finish what he started with FIFA, but this time focus his energies on the betting and financing behind fixing. He joined the ICSS as its director of integrity in May 2012, one week after leaving FIFA. As he selected his staff, events in Finland began to play out.

 

CHAPTER 29

W
ilson Perumal was nearing the end of his prison term. By standard legal mechanism, Finnish authorities would have deported him to his previous port of embarkation. That was the United Kingdom, which was one of the only European countries that maintained an extradition treaty with Singapore. Perumal might have traveled this route to his five-­year prison term, though it's doubtful that Dan Tan had conceived of it. Faced with few options, Perumal cut a deal.

Under the guise of Europol, the European Union's criminal intelligence body, Perumal agreed, upon his release from Finnish prison, to be transferred to Hungary. He had deep associations in Hungarian organized crime. He often traveled with Hungarian partners in order to carry out fixes. Authorities in Budapest were in the midst of a wide-­ranging investigation that eventually implicated several hundred figures in domestic soccer leagues. Police and prosecutors from Italy, Germany, France, and other European countries would eventually visit Budapest to interview Perumal, who, Eaton heard, was living under close monitoring and protection. It looked like Perumal was going to be in Europe for a while.

Eaton was gone from FIFA, but the issue of match-­fixing had a hold on the organization. The month following Eaton's departure, FIFA held its sixty-­second congress, in Budapest itself. Blatter and Valcke led the festivities. Ron Noble was there. They reviewed organizational priorities. They retired to the cafés along the Danube, which separates the city's two halves. And who among their party understood that the man who most threatened their security and longevity was just a few city blocks away, talking to Europol?

While the sporting and law enforcement brass felt safe in the approaching summer breeze, Perumal was in jeopardy, as he shared information with European authorities. Back in Singapore, underworld figures approached his old associate, Dany Jay Prakesh. “Protective custody,” Prakesh said. “They better have him locked away real tight right now. They were looking for him in Hungarian prison. They offered to pay me three hundred thousand dollars to go to Hungary just to help them identify him. They want me to sit on a roof with the sniper. It's easy. Fifteen minutes alone, he walks to the bathroom, he's dead. The Russians made three hundred and fifty million dollars last year on this. The Italians, the Bulgarians, the Hungarians, the Croatians. Wilson is messing with ­people's business.”