Brett Forrest - The Big Fix

Perumal would escape it all at Orchard Towers, Singapore’s “Four Floors of Whores,” a shopping complex that turned into a sprawling boudoir in the evening. Here there was business to be done. Perumal mingled with football players there, many of them foreign players, the high-priced imports with the disposable income that Perumal was trying to secure for himself. As the European players tossed money around and as the girls laughed and wanted in on the action, Perumal sauntered into their circle. He approached one of the players, this time with a new strategy.

Perumal approached a foreign player he recognised from watching league matches in Singapore. And from what Perumal could surmise, the player was disinterested. At times, he was the strongest player on the field. At other times, it was hard to pick him out of the lazy back-and-forth of the play. As they spoke over the music at Orchard Towers, Perumal asked him to win.

Perumal had been fixing single games by compromising the defenders and goalkeeper, compelling them to allow the opposing team to score. Now he saw how the fix could work in another way, with a foreign player who was slumming, on the downside of his career, stuck in an Asian lower league for the nightclubs, the easy money, the women, not the glory that he had once imagined, but which had long faded from his aspirations. In those nights at the Orchard Towers, Perumal realized that the players were just like he was, living without a thought for tomorrow, concerned with money only to spend it. Perumal and the player locked eyes in agreement over the flashing lights of the action.

Perumal instructed him to jog along with the rest of the players throughout a game, until that moment when he needed a goal. Perumal would then shout from the stands, like an impassioned fan. That was the signal, and the player would exert himself. In the first game under this arrangement he scored four goals. He easily controlled the intensity with which he played, especially since he was superior to the competition he faced. The partnership thrived. Things went well, so successfully and profitably that the player started suggesting fixes. Perumal realized that he was not the only one getting addicted to easy money.

Perumal was liquid again, and he rejoined Kurusamy’s poker game. He wasn’t consistently winning at Pal’s table, but he was bragging plenty. The Boss listened closely to what Perumal said, even if he didn’t let on. And soon his player had slipped through Perumal’s fingers, going to work for Kurusamy. Perumal was left with nothing besides a costly lesson in the fix. Players had fleeting loyalty. Fixing partners had none at all. Years later, such realities would upend the high life that Perumal had constructed for himself.

There was another lesson that was more valuable, though Perumal was not ready to learn it. Since Kurusamy had many influential people on his payroll in Malaysia and Singapore, he felt comfortable enough to boast. He had spent ten years in prison, starting in the 1980s, and through that despair had attained wealth and criminal authority. But he became too public. The king of this “victimless” crime hadn’t figured on the pride of the victim. Kurusamy wasn’t concerned about defrauding bettors or preying on the morality of the players on the field. But he would have profited by understanding that he was lampooning the state. In 1994, Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), the terror of local criminals, initiated a match-fixing crackdown. Kurusamy was arrested.

He wasn’t the only one. In September 1994, a Singaporean tournament called the Constituency Cup was coming up, and Perumal phoned a player, proposing a fix in the competition, offering $3,000. In light of the CPIB crackdown, the player reported the approach to police. The authorities researched the phone record. They traced the call to Perumal’s residence, and in short order, Perumal had a new residence: prison. But in time, he would soon go further afield than he had ever imagined.

Bail was Singapore’s beautiful game, as Perumal and Kurusamy quickly gained their liberty while awaiting sentencing. But their business was shackled by the CPIB. Fixing was too hot in Singapore and Malaysia. The cash had ceased flowing. Kurusamy needed to find another way.

Kurusamy had no other way, no other place. He was uneducated. He spoke only passable English. He was not a man of the world. His world was the Malay Peninsula, with its government and police officials whom the Boss knew by name and shared history. Now this world was off-limits to him. Kurusamy developed an idea. Like the many goods that flowed out of the Singapore port, one of the busiest in the world, export was the key to financial mobility. The Boss summoned Perumal. “Go to Europe,” he told him.

Perumal traveled on the passport of a friend, easily slipping off the island, breaking the bounds of his bail agreement. He traveled with a partner. The two flew to the United Kingdom, the center of world football, where the inhospitable weather surprised them. They weren’t in Asia anymore, and they realized that they had wandered into the deep end of the pool. Back home, they had been suave operators. England neutralized any special powers they thought they possessed. They didn’t know any players. They didn’t know any cops or politicians. Wandering nearly without aim, they found their way to the training grounds of Birmingham, and of Chelsea, the latter one of the biggest clubs in the game. Like rank amateurs, Perumal and his partner posed as journalists.

This was the land of Ladbrokes and William Hill, a sophisticated, legal gambling market that provided the Englishman with a betting slip to heighten his interest in a match. But this had nothing on the Asian marketplace. Betting in Asia was not for fun, or even for watching a game. It was serious business, the business of cultural addiction, and it was about to grow exponentially, making the English market look like a child’s hobby. The Singaporean, Indonesian, and Chinese had no favorite teams, just favorite bets, those that appeared winnable. These billions of people drawn together in identical behavior constituted an enormous market. Ladbrokes and the other regulated bookmakers had the name, the veneer of English respectability. But as Perumal realised, the market and the power were Asian. But few people knew this. Not yet.

When Perumal approached players in Great Britain, they turned their backs on him, walked right past him, looked right through him. When he did happen to get close enough to players to make his proposal – £60,000 to enhance a match – players laughed at him, then reported him. Word got around, and soon coaches and administrators were running Perumal and his partner off their grounds. Most insulting of all: no one ever called the cops. They didn’t take Perumal seriously.

Back in Singapore, Kurusamy was furious with Perumal’s lack of results, though there was not much he could do. His trial was approaching. Perumal himself stood trial in January 1995. The court convicted him for match-fixing and leaving the country on a false passport. He was sentenced to one year in prison.

When Perumal received parole, eight months later, little had changed. Match-fixing was still too hot in Singapore. The country’s international reputation was at stake. How could Singapore be known for best business practices when its most public events constituted a fraud? The CPIB set out to eradicate fixing in Singapore. The Boss still had to make his money. The United Kingdom had proven impenetrable, for now. But there was another market, and it was even bigger.

Kurusamy arrived in the United States flush with cash, connecting in New York for a flight to Atlanta. Perumal joined him, as did several others from a gathering Asian syndicate. The opportunity before them was worth a concentrated effort.