Plans to fix Olympics football busted

Match rigging could potentially occur in other major sporting events like the Rio Olympics in 2016 in Brazil.

In an e-mail to The New Paper last year, convicted match fixer Wilson Raj Perumal claimed he had fixed a football match in the 1996 Olympics Games in Atlanta, Georgia.

He said: "My first international match was Tunisia versus Portugal in Atlanta Olympics (sic).

"That was the time Danny ran away with US$80,000 (S$100,000) belonging to Pal, and I was held accountable for the money."

The only two people who can verify Wilson Raj's statement - Rajendran "Pal" Kurusamy and Danny Jay - have been unreachable since the middle of last month.

Spokesman for International Olympic Committee (IOC) Sandrine Tonge told TNP in August: "Specifically on the 1996 Atlanta Games and the match you are referring to, no evidence has ever been transmitted to the IOC.

"Please note that our monitoring system to detect potential match fixing or irregular betting activities at the Olympic Games was not in place at the time."

She said IOC took its first preventive measures to tackle the problem of match fixing and irregular betting seven years ago.

Matches allegedly linked to Dan Tan's syndicate rig fix

1. February 2011, Antalya Turkey. International Friendlies. Bolivia versus Latvia, and Bulgaria versus Estonia.

In the two matches, allegedly organised by Singaporean Anthony Santia Raj, all seven goals were scored through penalties.

2. March 2011, United Arab Emirates. International Friendlies. Kuwait versus Jordan, and Iraq versus North Korea.

The fix was foiled by Fifa's security team. The syndicate, led by a Singaporean businessman named in Italy's Cremona probe as a travel companion of alleged kelong king Dan Tan Seet Eng, loses S$2 million.

3. October 2010. International Friendly. Bolivia versus Venezuela.

Wilson Raj Perumal told The New Paper that he sent Santia Raj to "strike a deal" with the Bolivian FA, but Santia Raj betrayed him and allegedly sold his (Wilson Raj's) project to Dan Tan.

4. Italy's Serie A and Serie B

In December 2011, Dan Tan and his syndicate members - locally and from the Balkans - were named for allegedly fixing football matches in Italy's Serie A and Serie B. In may this year, a Hungarian court charged Tan in absentia for his alleged role in fixing matches there.

5. German investigators have a list of suspicious matches linked to Singapore-based syndicates.

Mr Friedhelm Althans, head of an Europol probe which revealed in February that more than 300 suspicious international matches were connected with the Singaporean cartel, was unable to share details.

But he told TNP: "We learnt that different match fixers all over the world were depending on the possibility of the (Tan's) cartel placing large sums of money on the fixed matches on the Asian betting-market."

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