Corruption exposed
Match-fixing is one of the major scourges in modern sport. And Wilson Raj Perumal is the kingpin.
How Wilson Perumal fixed Bafana’s World Cup warm-ups
The scourge of matchfixing in football is fuelled by the vast amounts of money to be made by those who can cheat the system – and no-one has been as brazen or successful as Wilson Raj Perumal. Twice jailed for match-fixing, Singapore national Perumal at times made an estimated £3-million (R66-million) per game from manipulating results to suit his bets. And if recent reports from Zimbabwe are to be believed, he is back in the game, despite turning into a prosecution witness in Hungary and vowing to help Fifa fight match-fixing. But Perumal’s legacy goes beyond raking in money – he also claims to have smoothed the path for Nigeria and Honduras to qualify for the 2010World Cup in South Africa, as both were on the brink of missing out. He makes a number of statements in his tell-all book KelongKings, some of which have since been substantiated, including, according to Fifa, his manipulation of South Africa’s results in warm-up friendly matches ahead of the 2010World Cup. It leaves Bafana Bafana’s’ record books in tatters – their largest ever victory, a 5-0 defeat over Guatemala in May 2010, was handled by a corrupt referee who ensured that result was reached by hook or crook. The legitimacy of the records of players and coaches involved will be forever stained through no fault of their own. Katlego Mphela converts a penalty against Guatemala Perumal’s modusoperandi essentially revolved around bribing players, coaches and match officials to ensure a preferred number of goals were scored. With the proliferation of internet betting, and ‘real-time’ betting, there are potentially millions of dollars to be made in just a few minutes if you are sure of an outcome. Each game that is open for betting – thousands every month – is assigned what is known as a par score by the company taking bets. So for example, a betting company may predict that the next Derby between Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates will see two goals. The score, be it 2-0 or 1-1, is not important. Perumal would then place large sums of money on the fact that there would be, for example, five goals in the match. The greater the number of goals he would predict above the par score, the larger the odds in his favour and the more money he made. He would by then have paid players or referees to ensure his prediction was realised. Higher profile matches meant more money which was why he unsuccessfully targeted theWorld Cup in 2010. He also tried to fix the margin of victory of games, though this was more difficult, as he tells in his recollection of the very first game he tried to fix, between BosniaHerzegovina and Zimbabwe in 1997, where he allegedly paid off Zimbabwe players to lose by a two-goal margin. With the Bosnians leading 2-1 in the second half, a Zimbabwe player volleyed home for 2-2. Perumal described the incident like this in Kelong Kings:“What followed was the strangest goal celebration that I’ve ever seen in my entire WILSON Raj Perumal has a long history with Zimbabwe football, saying of the players:“These black guys were dirt-poor and could be corrupted”. It started in 1997 with his first fix as a Zimbabwe side toured Malaysia, before exploding into the‘Asiagate’ scandal that saw 82 players, coaches and administrators briefly banned by Zifa. Fresh allegations suggest Perumal is involved again, through his younger brother, in the current scandal that suggests there have been attempts to fix games in South Africa’s Premier Soccer League, using Zimbabwean players.
life. The Zimbabwean player brought his hands to his head as if to say,‘What have a I done?’.”