The Big Fix (7 page)

The Serbian national team was having breakfast at its hotel, before its match later in the day. Boksic introduced Eaton to Zoran Lakovic, the general secretary of the Serbian team, then proceeded to conduct a conversation with Lakovic in what sounded to Eaton to be Serbian. Eaton puzzled at how Boksic had worked his way into this position, conducting what amounted to a private conversation with a national team official under the guise of representing the world's largest athletic body. He could have been saying anything to the man, and no one from FIFA would have been the wiser.

On the drive to Hypo-­Arena, Boksic explained that he had informed the Serbian official that he was representing FIFA. He then warned the Serbian team, because its players had been spotted recently in the company of a well-­known Balkan fixer. Eaton bristled. “Assisting FIFA does not mean representing FIFA,” he said. “In your future role with FIFA, you are to provide evidence of what you allege to me. FIFA will take any action with players and officials. Not you. You are never to speak with anyone independently again.” The men drove on in silence.

Eaton couldn't figure out who Boksic was, or what he was after. Later, at the stadium, Eaton pressed Boksic for hard information. Boksic claimed that he possessed a transcript of a phone call between the Nigerian national team goaltender and a known Singaporean fixer. He said that the Slovenian national team was also under suspicion. When Eaton asked to see documented evidence to substantiate his claims, Boksic motioned for Eaton to look over his shoulder discreetly. A few men huddled nearby. “That's my protection team,” he said.

On the ride to the airport, Eaton again pressed Boksic for documentation. “What evidence do you have about the Serbian players?” he asked.

“My intelligence agency has telephone transcripts of conversations between them and the manipulator,” Boksic replied.

Tiring of Boksic's cloak-­and-­dagger demeanor, Eaton turned to him pointedly. “What agency do you work for?”

Boksic replied, “the BND,” the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany's foreign intelligence agency. He said that he had worked for the BND for nine years. He claimed that he had recently arranged BND protection for Peter Limacher, the UEFA lawyer who had introduced Boksic to FIFA, because Limacher had received death threats from Croatian organized crime. Boksic went on to say that he possessed contacts in this same criminal underworld, but that he had cultivated these relationships in his role for the BND, clandestinely.

While Eaton was trying to piece together everything that Boksic was telling him, Boksic turned to him. “The BND knows you,” he said, in a flattering tone. “They know you're a very good policeman.”

U
pon landing in Johannesburg, Eaton wrote Villiger, urging him to sever FIFA's association with Boksic. Villiger declined. Eaton then phoned Limacher, at UEFA. Like Villiger, he vouched for Boksic. Eaton asked Limacher what proof he had that Boksic worked for a European intelligence agency. Limacher said that a team of intelligence agents always protected Boksic. Limacher's enthusiasm for Boksic was overwhelming, yet Eaton found the basis for his belief vague.

Instead, Eaton listened to his intuition. It had served him well for so long, tested in hundreds of investigations. He was convinced that Boksic was not a serious informant, that he was lying and exaggerating. If Boksic wasn't who he claimed to be, then who was he? And how had he so easily gained the trust of soccer's two most powerful governing bodies? “These ­people were living in a fool's paradise,” Eaton says.

Eaton had only just begun his affiliation with FIFA. He had no influence, no track record. If the brass wanted Boksic in South Africa, then Eaton would have to work with him. But there was one final protective mechanism that he could employ. He phoned Boksic and asked him to travel to Lyon for a psychological exam. This was standard procedure for an undercover assignment, protection for both the policing body and the agent who would be employing the cover story. Again, Boksic balked, claiming that his BND boss wouldn't permit it.

C
ompetition opened on the nineteenth World Cup on June 11, 2010, with South Africa facing Mexico in Johannesburg. This was the first World Cup ever held in Africa, and along with the vuvuzelas that blared a dull roar across the field of play, this competition brought its own set of distractions.

Eaton spent longs days and nights working alongside Interpol, the FBI, and South African police and military intelligence assessing security threats. Chief among them, as Eaton learned, was al-­Shabaab. A Somali Islamic group, al-­Shabaab was the deadliest terrorist organization in Africa. Only months before, its leaders had announced that al-­Shabaab was a cell group of al-­Qaeda. Eaton and his colleagues did their best to keep track of known militants as they crossed Africa's many international borders in the time leading up to the World Cup. Meanwhile, Eaton had tasked his former Interpol subordinates to compile a file on Robin Boksic.

Boksic arrived in Johannesburg soon after the games began. He provided Eaton with a list of six national teams that he claimed had been compromised by fixers, along with the names of a number of players and officials. Boksic reiterated that he possessed documents to bolster his claims, including reports and telephone transcripts. He claimed that his BND boss had now authorized him to hand over paperwork to FIFA, but Eaton waited for the documentation.

He had plenty else to do. Each morning he assessed what petty crime had taken place the night before, and whether any of the incidents posed a greater threat to the tournament. He briefed the head security officers of the stadiums that were to host matches that day. His security responsibilities had so overwhelmed him that he hired a colleague as a consultant.

Fred Fitzroy was a veteran of undercover operations for the Australian Federal Police, embedding with violent drug gangs. On several occasions, he had come near death. Eaton waited to hear what information and impressions Fitzroy would gather from spending time with Boksic.

Fitzroy reported that at times, Boksic was effusive, rambling on through numerous fixing claims, though never providing substantiation. At other times, he was monosyllabic. His mood vacillated. He was vague and defensive. He regularly stepped away from Fitzroy to make or accept phone calls, speaking in German and Croatian. Boksic cultivated an air of danger, claiming that his security detail, German and Israeli in composition, protected him around the clock, in twelve-­hour shifts. Occasionally, Boksic claimed, U.S. and Spanish secret ser­vice personnel participated. As if to explain the need for such blanketing, he stressed his intimacy with dangerous criminals. He said that organized crime figures had earned millions of euros from the information that he had provided, which he had done to strengthen his cover as “a manipulator and UEFA investigator.” This led Fitzroy to conclude that UEFA may have financed its own infiltration.

Eaton spoke with several English journalists covering the World Cup, and he was impressed by their knowledge of match-­fixing. They corroborated some of the information that Boksic had ventured. Still, Eaton viewed Boksic much like the South American and European football hooligans whom South African border guards were turning away by the hundreds.

“Boksic states and repeatedly re-­states two incompatible cover stories,” Fitzroy later wrote in an assessment of “Classic Caress,” the name that Eaton had given to the operation. “With the first he maintains he is an under-­cover criminal gambler and football match manipulator working secretly for the German Intelligence organisation, the BND. With the second he openly declares himself as an investigator working for UEFA. . . . The logical extension of his own combined cover-­stories would require Boksic to portray himself as a corrupt UEFA Investigator to solicit match-­fixing information with any credibility. He cannot declare himself to be an investigator one minute, and a criminal the next, to essentially the same client group, without appearing corrupt or simply incompetent.”

Boksic continually petitioned Eaton for access to team training grounds, VIP areas, media rooms, and locker rooms for players and officials. Eaton repeatedly denied him. On the tenth day of competition, Boksic gave up, telling Fitzroy that he had determined that the tournament was free of match-­fixing. He left South Africa, and FIFA never heard from him again. In late June, Fitzroy sent Boksic two text messages, asking him to make contact. Fitzroy received a message in reply, a question mark.

Eaton and Fitzroy weren't the only ones who questioned Boksic's credibility and UEFA's association with him. “We got an order from UEFA to work with Boksic because he was a guy who could deliver information,” says Carsten Koerl, the CEO of Sportradar, a betting-­industry watchdog organization. “After two months, we couldn't work with him anymore, because he was telling confusing stories. He was speaking things that didn't make much sense to me.”

B
y the time Spain beat Holland, 1–0, in the final game, winning its first World Cup, Eaton had received a dossier on Boksic. Eaton's contacts in Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Romania, and Germany painted a detailed picture.

Robin Boksic was an ethnic Croat from Bosnia. During the Balkan conflict in the 1990s, he and his family obtained asylum in Munich. By that time, Eaton's sources reported, he was already a soldier with the Hercegovci mafia, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the western Balkans. He hooked on with the Munich branch of the Hercegovci mafia, run by Ante Sapina, and by the early 2000s, he was acting as a courier between the two branches of the organization. Boksic's superiors took note of his “high level of arrogance,” and they directed him toward more lucrative activities.

Beginning in 2003, informants had reported to Croatian police that Ante Sapina entrusted Boksic with approaching Balkan nationals working as referees, coaches, players, and club managers to discuss what it would take to influence football match results. German police arrested Boksic in 2006, as part of the Bochum dragnet.

Eaton's sources suggested that Boksic was serving clandestinely as a double agent for both the Hercegovci mafia and the German police, providing the latter with information that might harm rivals to his criminal organization's continuing match-­fixing enterprise. In the wake of the Bochum case, the Croat leadership of the Hercegovci mafia began to undermine Sapina, attempting to take control of the Munich wing of the organization. Eaton's sources told him that Boksic had provided authorities with information on Sapina, who was arrested again in 2009 for fixing the Croat championship.

It was a murky picture, though clear enough for FIFA's new security chief. FIFA had tasked Eaton with coordinating security efforts at soccer's marquee event, but he had stumbled upon an issue of more immediate concern. Eaton couldn't blame ­people like Villiger and Limacher. They weren't police. They had no experience in intelligence. All the same, it surprised Eaton to know that a man of Boksic's match-­fixing history had walked through the front door of soccer's biggest competition. Had Boksic gone to South Africa in order to fix matches? Eaton thought so.

In Kampala, Uganda, while the World Cup championship match was in progress, two al-­Shabaab suicide bombs exploded, killing seventy ­people who were watching the game on TV. The blasts confirmed the fears of soccer administrators, that an organized criminal group would co-­opt the sport for its own ends. And it brought Eaton to his senses, for he recognized a parallel concern. He understood now that match-­fixing was as threatening to soccer's integrity as terrorism was to its security. Judging by Boksic's ease of entry, he understood that no one at FIFA was prepared to defend the game. As Eaton pondered this, his mind grasping the critical role that had befallen him, somewhere in the bowels of Johannesburg's Soccer City Stadium, a man brushed past. The man was Tamil Indian, and carrying a fraudulent Singaporean passport.

 

CHAPTER 9

I
asked around, spread the word, ‘Which ref is tough enough to do the fix in front of forty thousand fans?' ” says Wilson Perumal. “It's not easy. That is a lot of ­people watching. You have to be really strong to do it. This one guy speaks up, Ibrahim Chaibou, and he says, ‘I'll do it.'
*
It was just before the World Cup, an exhibition. South Africa against Guatemala. He called penalties outside the box. Three hand balls. He did really great. He just took charge and did it. There were forty thousand South Africans in the stadium. The Guatemalans weren't going to say anything.” With the Nigerien, FIFA-­sanctioned Chaibou refereeing the match, South Africa won, 5–1. The cheering in Peter Mokaba Stadium rang in his ears, and Perumal couldn't help but think of Pal Kurusamy, his mentor, who had once ruled the Malaysia Cup. It was May 31, 2010, and Wilson Perumal was the biggest match-­fixer in the world.

F
our years earlier, Perumal had walked out of prison lower than he had ever been. Singaporean authorities had paroled him after three years in custody. But this was no opportunity for rejoicing. Perumal was broke. His fixing network was in tatters. His old contacts had no use for him. The only ­people he believed he could count on were boyhood friends Dany Jay Prakesh and Jason Jo Lourdes—­both Tamils whom Perumal had drawn into the fixing trade.

Perumal had spent his adulthood refining one skill. The last time he had tried his hand at a different manner of crime, the credit card scheme had cost him three years. Perumal didn't have much, but he realized that what he did have had grown increasingly valuable during his prison stretch. The Internet had fundamentally altered the sports betting market. That wasn't the only thing that had accelerated. Perumal now possessed the sense of urgency of one who believes that he has wasted his years and has no time left to dawdle. He started meeting with the connected contacts that he still had, convincing them that he could tap them into the growing gold mine of soccer betting. “He's very charming,” Prakesh says. “Wilson can sell you anything.” He was selling a concept that any well-­attuned businessman didn't need to be sold: globalization.

Not only were Singapore's bookmakers offering limited bets for local league matches, allowing for no liquidity in the market, but Perumal was frightened of the Singaporean justice system. Perumal had a lengthy criminal record now, and he knew that the next misstep he took, however minor, would lead right back to custody. He only had one marketable skill, and it made no sense to apply it in Singapore. If he was going to rebuild his match-­fixing enterprise, he would have to do it outside the country. He had to take his act abroad.

M
alaysian police tailed Perumal through the streets of Petaling Jaya. It was October 2008, the beginning of the rainy season. The Merdeka Tournament, honoring Malaysian independence, was in progress. Officials at the Football Association of Malaysia had never heard of Perumal, but they were eyeing a recent tournament match. The under-­twenty national team of Sierra Leone had lost to Malaysia, 4–0. A promotional company had represented Sierra Leone, gaining its national team entrance to the tournament. Perumal was not listed as an officer of the company, yet he spent considerable time around the team, issuing orders to players and coaches. Something didn't add up, least of all the four easy goals that Malaysia had scored. Police uncovered no evidence on Perumal during surveillance, though they remained suspicious of his motive for visiting their modest competition.

In addition to Malaysia and Sierra Leone, the tournament included Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, and Vietnam. Hardly a World Cup lineup. That didn't matter. Internet betting had changed everything. ­People from all over the world were gambling on any match that was available on Internet bookmaking sites, and in large numbers. Especially in Asia, gamblers were proving themselves to be voracious to a new degree, playing into the hands of a fixer who knew how to manipulate the system.

But how was Perumal linked with Sierra Leone, a war-­torn speck of a country on the far side of Africa, eight thousand miles from Singapore? Financial opportunity knows no distance. Sierra Leone epitomized the new Perumal target. He remembered his foray into European fixing on behalf of Kurusamy, how he clumsily approached players from the biggest, wealthiest clubs in the game. The accounting firm Deloitte recently determined that the average English Premier League player earns roughly $50,000 per week, which is more than the average annual British salary. For a fix, a player might earn a bit more. But it was folly to think that these players would risk their lucrative careers on a fix, especially with someone they had only just met in the parking lot outside the practice field. Perumal had gone about it all wrong, and he wouldn't make that mistake again.

In the late 1990s, approaching players from the top clubs made some financial sense, if not operational logic. The biggest games were the only ones that generated the sort of liquidity in the betting marketplace that allowed a fixing syndicate to place wagers that wouldn't upset the market. But the market had since grown to the point that you could place bets of several hundred thousand dollars on Sierra Leone's under-­twenty team without raising alarm. It took Wilson Perumal, who had spent his adulthood in fixing, a short time to read the warping market and develop a new strategy.

No longer was his goal to corrupt individual players or referees. He would corrupt entire national soccer federations. Perumal established a front company, Football 4U International, and he began to travel the world, representing himself as a promoter who specialized in arranging exhibition matches, or friendlies, between national teams. “It was a lot easier when you approach ­people when you are a company,” Perumal explains. ­“People want to know where you're from. If you're not registered somewhere, ­people are going to be skeptical of you.” Singapore's reputation for conducting clean, corruption-­free business made the country's passport one of the most accepted in the world. And it enabled Perumal and his lieutenants, Prakesh and Lourdes among them, to walk in through the front door of federations, particularly ones that had fallen on hard times.

These organizations weren't hard to identify. Perumal signed contracts with not only Sierra Leone, but also Bolivia, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and others, paying them as much as $100,000 in return for the right to select the officials who would referee the international friendlies that he would arrange. Perumal would also handle travel, accommodation, TV rights, and sponsorship, insinuating himself into the federations at multiple levels. The struggling federations soon found themselves suddenly wealthier, and playing against high-­profile clubs in the kinds of matches that would draw liquidity to the international betting market, if also a curious amount of red cards and penalty kicks. Perumal knew what he was doing. So did many federation officials, who either turned a blind eye or became actively involved. Meanwhile, Perumal built relations with not only refs and administrators, but players, coaches, and anyone else who might be able to influence the outcome of a match.

It was easy. Once Football 4U had forged an agreement with a national federation, together they targeted an unwitting opponent, then paid a FIFA match agent to sanction a friendly or a series of friendlies. At that point, bookmakers would list the matches, and Perumal was in business.

Perumal's communications with officials from the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) revealed his opportunistic zeal. Perumal claimed to have found a willing partner in Henrietta Rushwaya, the CEO of ZIFA, and that the two discussed numerous opportunities, including Zimbabwe's October World Cup qualifier match against neighboring Namibia.
*
By the middle of 2008, Perumal and Rushwaya were negotiating a friendly between Zimbabwe and Iran. In advance of the CAF Champions League, Africa's equivalent of the UEFA Champions League, their communications intensified. On August 17 and August 30, 2008, the Dynamos Football Club, from the Zimbabwean capital of Harare, would face Cairo's Al Ahly, the biggest club in Egypt. Writing from the account of his then girlfriend, Aisha Iqbal, Perumal sent Rushwaya the following email, on August 4:

Subject: Re: Friendly international with Iran

Hello, Maam

How are you doing. Please keep me posted on the Dinamo's [
sic
] game with AI Ahli [
sic
]. We want 2 goals in each half and you can get 1 goal after conceding the 4th goal. Reward will be 100,000 US dollars. You will have to take your cut from this sum. CAF champions league is not very popular yet and that is the reason why it will not fetch more than 100,000.

I can influence the match against Namibia in your favour leave that to me. Please ensure your team gets adequate match practice to ensure a safe passage into the next round. There is close to 500,000 US dollars if your team can go to the next round. Please arrange friendly matches with european nations even if it falls in 2009. airfare will be taken care of.

I have some youth tournaments comming up in november. Do you have a U21 boys team. Please assemble 1 if you dont.

Thank you.

Raj

Please keep me posted on the Iran match.

In its essence, Perumal's new strategy was no different from his first fixes back in Singapore's Jalan Besar Stadium. The difference was the amount of money he was handling. He was now in the big leagues.