Wilson Raj Perumal, a Singaporean match-fixer, has claimed that his syndicate helped two international sides qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Perumal makes the allegations in his new book.
Perumal was part of a syndicate that was responsible for bribing officials, and compromised players, and fixing hundreds of matches around the world. It was believed that the syndicate mainly fixed international friendlies, but the new allegations claim that he also influenced the results of World Cup qualifiers, assisting Honduras and Nigeria to qualify for the 2010 tournament.
Perumal was arrested in Helsinki in 2011 and sentenced to two years in prison. He confessed to match fixing and agreed to co-operate with the authorities and implicated fellow Singaporean Dan Tan, alleged to be at the heart of the fixing and gambling ring. The ring would fix matches and then place bets in underground Chinese markets.
The book, written in conjunction with the investigative journalists Alessandro Righi and Emanuele Piano, also details the huge sums of money he won and lost – up to €3 million in a single night as well as the huge reach of the match-fixing syndicate.
Perumal claims that he met with football officials in Nigeria, and promised to help the country qualify for the World Cup. In exchange Perumal was given control of organizing the warm-up matches held in Nigeria as well as a cut of money that Fifa provided for hosting the tournament.
Perumal claims that he had influence over three players who helped Nigeria to victory in one of their qualifiers. He further claims he offered Mozambique a $100,000 bonus if they were able to beat or draw Tunisia in a crucial game. Mozambique would pull off an upset 1-0 victory.
Perumal also outlines how he set up a company called Football4U which was a front for his bribery scheme. He claims that he ordered an associate to ensure Honduras won a match and qualified for the 2010 World Cup. He also stated that the Honduran team was unaware of his intervention.
“My plan had worked and I was the unsung hero of Nigeria’s qualification to the final rounds of the 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa,” writes Perumal. “Ferrying Nigeria and Honduras to the World Cup was a personal achievement. ‘F***,’ I considered. ‘I got two teams to qualify for the World Cup but I cannot tell anyone.'”
He also claims to have made unsuccessful attempts to bribe referees at the 2010 World Cup. Perumal, claims to have had a hand in or profited from fixed matches all over the world from the heights of Serie A, to lower tier leagues in Latin America. He also claims to have influenced results at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, not just in the football tournament, but in a number of events.
The book also details an unsuccessful attempt to bribe the Mexican goal-keeper ahead of a match at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, the earliest known major match that Perumal admits involvement in attempting to fix.
Perumal’s book is not the first to claim wide-spread match fixing in the world of professional soccer. Canadian Declan Hill claimed to have infiltrated an Asian match-fixing syndicate in his book “The Fix.” He alleges that the group he infiltrated was successful in fixing the score-line of a 2006 World Cup game between Ghana and Brazil. Hill claims that players on the Ghana team were bribed to ensure that Brazil would score three goals in the game.
Hill further outlines wide spread match fixing from the lowest levels of professional soccer all the way up to the Premier League.
Europol continues to investigate match fixing and last year, alledged that more than 780 professional matches (380 in Europe) were under suspicion of match fixing by gangs from Eastern Europe and Asia.
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