The Big Fix (18 page)

 

CHAPTER 33

O
n June 1, 2012, Rushwaya received an email from Perumal. “I heard you went through quite a lot of trouble,” Perumal wrote. “Don't worry vengeance is a dish best served when it is cold. . . . Fuck FIFA, Fuck the ethics committee. How many trusted men do you still have in the team. They play Guinea. What is the strength of the team. Kindly send me some details.” Rushwaya shared the email with Eaton.

Eaton discussed it with one of his investigators. “These are coppers behind this,” Eaton wrote, determining that the email was “a fish hook,” a device meant to ensnare Rushwaya, involving her in a new fix. Zimbabwe would face Guinea only two days after the email had been sent. Eaton believed that Perumal's Europol handlers in Budapest were trying to manipulate Rushwaya through false sympathy for the troubles she had recently endured. He was underwhelmed by the tactics employed by “these Europol twits.”

Eaton recognized a pattern. He knew that Perumal had begun reaching out to his old contacts. Perumal was writing emails to ­people in Singapore, to referees he had used in fixes. He had resumed posting to Facebook, reviving his dormant network. Eaton surmised that it was a ploy, and a clumsy one, to engender further arrests and investigations. And he wanted in. Eaton wrote to his investigator: “Let's have some fun with all these pricks—­criminal, coppers and football fucks—­if we can't beat 'em, let's fuck with them.”

Eaton advised Rushwaya to reply to Perumal. On June 6, she wrote:

Hi Wilson

I am really surprised and happy to hear from you. Yes times have been hard but I think they have been

Hard for you too. I will be happy to see ­people get what they deserve.

The papers say you are in prison. So where are you now? Can we meet in Africa soon to discuss? I am still close with many of the team. The keepers, centre back, left and right back, and two mid fielders. What do you suggest for them?

We lost 1–0 to Guinea at home. Sorry for the late reply. . . . We are playing Mozambique this weekend in Maputo. What do you suggest?

Perumal answered quickly:

Are you very sure the players can work. i don't want anymore trouble for anyone. I think it is a loosing [
sic
] battle in Maputo. But the players have to think likewise. If you can get the mobile numbers of the players in Maputo we can work. Since you are going to be in Maputo as well then you can arrange the rest.

I have a man in Maputo. Please pass me your Mozambique number as soon as you get one.

I will call u in yr zim number later today.

Bye. Best regards.

No one knows i am out. keep it that way. i dont trust anyone other than u.

The correspondence eventually dissipated, and it left Eaton wondering just what Perumal or his handlers were trying to achieve. He had told his underlings that the only way to know what a criminal is doing is by speaking with him. In late 2012, Eaton emailed Perumal. Eaton wanted to maintain contact with Perumal, simply as a point of operational utility. He was also piecing together details about possible fixed matches in the World Cup in South Africa.

Eaton had received information from South African Customs. He knew that Perumal, traveling on the Raja Morgan Chelliah passport, had been in South Africa for almost the entirety of the World Cup. Eaton had other evidence of Perumal's presence in the country during that time, including photos that had been posted to Facebook. He didn't let on. He asked Perumal who may have been in South Africa at the time, who may have been in a position to manipulate matches.

“Please note that my passport was impounded by the Singapore police during this time,” Perumal wrote to Eaton. “Obviously i was not in a position to travel.” He advised Eaton to look into Santia's activities. He claimed that Dan Tan was staying at the Garden Court hotel during South Africa's matches against Colombia and Guatemala. “Wilson Raj was in Singapore busy with his case during this period,” he wrote. “I may have been the CEO of Football 4 U that does not mean i rigged all these matches.”

Eaton replied, hinting of his knowledge of Perumal's emails to South African officials. “I understand you have to be careful, and I want to help if I can to reduce your personal exposure in SA, which will become explosive, be sure of that,” Eaton wrote. “So give me something I can use on these guys. I think you are too important on many other issues that I hope we can work on in the future.”

Perumal stonewalled him. He continued to point the finger at Santia and Dan Tan, claiming that he himself hadn't been there, wasn't involved. This approach was trying Eaton's patience. He responded:

It's very important that we trust each other as far as is possible. . . . No matter what is happening in Europe, international political pressure driven by national embarrassment will be very strong indeed to find a scapegoat.

You need to very seriously consider you position here Wilson. In my opinion, which should count for something to you, you will need to do more than what you have so far disclosed in Europe. . . .

This is my candid advice to you. I'm interested in making the best of this emerging storm for you so that we can really clean up football.

F
ebruary 4, 2013, was a signal day in the fight against match-­fixing. This was the day that alerted the masses. In The Hague, Netherlands, Europol convened a press conference. Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, announced the findings of Operation VETO, an eighteen-­month investigation into match-­fixing on the continent. Wainwright announced that Europol had uncovered nearly four hundred manipulated matches in fifteen countries, involved 425 players, refs, administrators, and syndicate criminals. Wainwright singled out activity in leagues in Germany, Switzerland, and Turkey, as well as related matches in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. He intimated that the fixing syndicate had manipulated a UEFA Champions League match, as well as two World Cup qualifiers.

For those with knowledge of the issue, there was little revelatory information in Wainwright's announcement. Most of the matches that Wainwright discussed were part of ongoing criminal cases. They weren't news. What the press conference did reveal was the underlying tension between Europol and Interpol, as the two organizations, while working closely on many issues and cases, fought for credit and publicity. By grandstanding with information that was already in the public domain, Wainwright was trying to take law enforcement's lead position on match-­fixing.

Amid the political infighting and the petty arrests and the unending investigations and trials, match-­fixing continued on every continent. What was being done to combat it in a meaningful way? It had been more than a year since Italian authorities had issued an arrest warrant for Dan Tan. And while Dan Tan had spoken voluntarily with Singaporean authorities, he was still a free man. Wainwright had failed to mention that his star informant, Wilson Perumal, whose evidence had contributed significantly to Operation VETO, was doing all he could to put Dan Tan in the Singapore jail cell he himself knew all too well.

 

CHAPTER 34

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY, SUMMER, 2013

W
hat a feeling, free in Budapest. The Danube sparkles on a summer evening. The night-­light Buda Castle reflects in the wrinkling waters, a spectacle of middle European gentility. The city's squares are alive with chatter, lager, leisure. The Chain Bridge stands ready to convey you across the Danube in nineteenth-­century grandeur, and what a pleasant way that must be to move. Here come the professionals. On the esplanade, these girls aren't playing games. There are too many of them, competition forcing them to be more straightforward than maybe you are ready for them to be. In front of the InterContinental hotel, they approach one by one, curious about your evening plans. They form groups, then packs, until it appears that the Hungarian capital is made for them and no one else. That is Budapest, beautiful tragically, unburdened by the petty morality of other places, ancient, permissively inclined to whatever you got.

Should you feel like gambling, go ahead, for here it's understood that life itself is such, a proposition. The Las Vegas Casino is not a poor place to do it, located here on the Pest side of things, there on the ground floor of the Sofitel hotel, off József Attila Street, paces from the Danube. The taxis whip by the casino, heading away from the water and on to inland adventure. These cars and girls for hire confuse the summer street. So do the ­people ambling about drunkenly or sullenly in search of something to do, the sun now gone down. There is the one person standing still amid life's proposition, the red Las Vegas lights emblazoning his features.

Wilson Raj Perumal asks: “How about a bite to eat?” He stands six feet tall, and he fills a red rugby shirt with solidity, though he shakes hands weakly. Perumal is forty-­seven years old. His hair is graying at the sides. This is the only visible sign of advancing age. Otherwise, his eyes sparkle. Why shouldn't they? Summer in Budapest feels like a reward.

The restaurant is called Spoon. It is located on a boat, moored to the Pest embankment. It's a date place, with attentive ser­vice. Sitting at the table, ordering a snack, Perumal is amiable, polite, interested, alert. He speaks English in the characteristically Indian accent, and for some reason that is quaint and kindly to hear, as though the speaker were incapable of doing any wrong. He asks, “Is this your first time to Budapest?” as though he were a local.

Shortly after Perumal arrived in Budapest, in early 2012, police arrested a few dozen players in the Hungarian league, most of them from Rákospalotai EAC, a club located in northeastern Budapest. Local sources claim that these were low-­level figures, that the government doesn't have the will to target the leaders of Hungary's match-­fixing ring. Perumal is due to testify in an upcoming trial. He has said enough to earn a series of conditional one-­year visas, expiring and renewable each May. But he exists here at the whim of the federal prosecutor's office. “At the moment, they are finished with me,” he says. “They might fuck me up, because this is Hungary. I don't know what they might hand out next May.”

While the local authorities have provided Perumal with no guarantees, they have allowed their guest remarkable latitude. “The first year I was here,” he says, “I went to the clubs almost every night.” He smiles at the memories. “Hungarian women are very friendly.” Things have since changed for Perumal, he claims, the thrills having run their course. He says that he now lives with a woman, a local, who is twenty-­two years old. They have been trying to conceive a child, though with difficulty. “We're going to try in vitro fertilization,” he says. He has heard that Hungarian law allows for the father of a child locally born to petition for citizenship after a few years. Perumal may have engineered a way to avoid Singaporean prison permanently.

In the meantime, while in stasis in Budapest, disconnected from the fixing network that he developed over the years, Perumal says that he has designs on a new line of work. “I'm going to open a little restaurant. An Indian place. You can't find a good one here in Budapest. Part of it will be for gambling, with a few terminals where you can bet online.” This is how Perumal claims that he earns his keep for now, placing wagers on soccer matches through his standing account at the IBCbet portal. “If I am careful, and I don't get carried away, I can earn between one thousand and five thousand dollars per day,” he says. “If I'm not careful, I can lose a lot more.” He appears reconciled to his new circumstances, lucrative projects and transnational criminal conspiracy now fragments of the past. The old associations have gone by also. “Nobody wants anything to do with me,” he says. “I'm too hot right now.”

Spoon's many empty tables make the diner feel unwanted and alone. Perumal's characterization of his life in Budapest is no different. He says that the locals are difficult to befriend, or at least difficult for him, though he doesn't much mind. “I have only two friends in the whole world, ­people I could trust with a million dollars. I don't need more.”

Would two ­people be enough to kick-­start the old business, maybe run a few fixes remotely? Perumal says that he feels no temptation to do so. “I don't want to jeopardize my standing with the local authorities,” he says. “Anyway, that's all over for me. I'm stuck here. My wings are clipped.”

Perumal leans back in his chair. He lays his hands in his lap. He looks through the windows of the restaurant, across the water to the Buda Castle. “I figure I have only fifteen, twenty more years to live,” he says. “I can hang here.”

T
he night pushes on to a place called Romkert, an outdoor nightclub on the opposite side of the river. Here is the usual convergence of vaguely available young women and guys in tight T-­shirts with indecipherable writing silk-­screened onto them. The music is loud, though the energy is low. Perumal says that Romkert is usually livelier. “Sometimes you gamble and you lose,” he says, leaning an elbow against the bar. He orders a drink.

It doesn't take long to realize that Perumal is the sort of person who feels uncomfortable during the natural lulls of a conversation, is compelled to fill them. Among his preferred topics is the Singaporean justice system, and how it has wronged him. “I was sentenced to five years for nothing. I am so angry, sometimes I cannot go to sleep.” Five years for sparring with a security guard is an exorbitant, typically Singaporean sentence, and this legal episode would logically preoccupy the person at the unfortunate end of it. But while Perumal claims innocence of a sort concerning his airport charge, he is surprisingly forthcoming about his fixing schemes. He talks about them in great detail and wonder, as though he, in his new pedestrianism, finds these past experiences hard to believe. To him, they are hardly crimes at all.

“When I started branching out, it was so easy,” he says. “I realized that Bahrain had no money. They said, ‘Wilson, so long as you bring in a team, you pay the airfare, you pay the hotel, we are prepared to play. We're more than happy. Thank you very much.' Same thing, when you go down there with the referee exchange program. ‘We take your referee, throw him somewhere. We send you one. Our referee is going to do something dirty. Your referee don't have to do anything dirty.' This is how you speak. They're happy. Who wants to say no? A lot of them, they don't have any money. FIFA is not giving them enough money.” He takes a sip of his drink, then continues. His energy level has risen. “Football has got no money. There is money in Europe in the highest leagues. If you go to division two, it's already no more money. In Portugal, in Spain, they're barely making ends meet. Match-­fixing is not gonna end.”

The subject that elicits the most passion from Perumal is FIFA. The organization's troubles with corruption make it an easy target, though a worthy one, even if Perumal may be engaging in a game of misdirection. “FIFA is like a mafia organization,” he says. “They don't answer to anybody. They don't give a fuck about anybody. What I can't digest is who would want Qatar to host the World Cup in June? I've been there in June. You can't even walk around in a T-­shirt. Something is very wrong. Even a blind man would not make this mistake.”

Perumal contrasts himself to the body charged with overseeing the welfare of the game. “Fixing doesn't touch anybody,” he says. “There is no victim. I have turned ­people's lives around. African players would go home from a tournament with ten thousand, fourteen thousand dollars in their pockets. Nineteen years old. That kind of money changes their lives. I have helped players get operations for sick ­people in their families. I have put roofs over ­people's heads.” And he has provided for the lucrative Nigerien retirement of his favored FIFA referee. Perumal claims that he paid Ibrahim Chaibou roughly $500,000 over the course of their relationship. “Chaibou is now living with his four wives in Niger. He lives like a king.”

A group of four women gather near the bar. They are chatting closely with one another. One of them trades looks with a guy across the dance floor. There are many shadows in this nightclub, and many more in Budapest. Perumal knows that the more he divulges to investigators, the more enemies he makes. Yet he claims that life's dangers and dark pathways do not preoccupy him. He prefers not to hide. “I'm not afraid,” he says, looking around the club. “I have seen a lot. I live my life. It's better to be in the thick of the action.”

He leans toward the bar. He waves over the bartender and orders a bottle of champagne. As he waits, Perumal expands on his words. He knows how easy it is to get to someone, because he was the one who for years got to ­people. “It's always possible,” he says. “Human beings are vulnerable. We are all vulnerable.”

The bartender pops the cork of the bottle of champagne. He passes the bottle over the bar to Perumal, along with a few glasses. With these items in hand, Perumal approaches the group of four women in front of him. It's a gamble. “Ladies,” he says, grinning, “would you like some champagne?” Wordlessly, the girls disperse.