Soccer Capsules: Police track elusive figure in soccer match-fixing

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of a six-month, multiformat AP examination of how organized crime is corrupting soccer through match-fixing.

ROME (AP) — At 5:45 a.m. on Nov. 4, 2011, when early risers would have been sipping espressos and buttering toast, a man dressed in black disembarked at Milan’s Malpensa Airport after a 13-hour trip from Asia aboard a Singapore Airlines flight.

Italian court documents show he stayed in the country just 6 hours and 30 minutes, never left the airport, and then boarded a return flight to Singapore.

Why such a quick hop across the globe?

Italian authorities believe it was to deliver bribe money. They allege the suspected courier, who was under surveillance, delivered information and cash on behalf of a crime syndicate that fixes soccer matches.

Italy, a four-time World Cup-winning football power, has become so blighted by match-fixing that Premier Mario Monti has even suggested halting the professional game for two to three years to clean it up.

Italian prosecutors investigating dozens of league and cup games they say were fixed have followed a trail back to a figure who is thought to be in Singapore. In documents laying out their findings, prosecutors alleged that 48-year-old Tan Seet Eng is the boss of a crime syndicate that allegedly made millions betting on rigged Italian games between 2008 and late 2011, through bribing players, referees and club officials.

Italian authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Tan and list him as their No. 1 suspect, but they have been unable to take him into custody.

“Tan Seet Eng, nicknamed Dan, surfaces in all the European investigations examined, including the Italian one, so therefore he constitutes a common thread that links each criminal gang together,” prosecutors stated in a 340-page court document detailing their investigation, which has been leaked to Italian news media. “He directs the aforementioned criminal gang.”

Italian authorities have about 150 people under investigation, including Tan, but have yet to indict any of them, prosecutor Roberto Di Martino told The Associated Press last month. Italian arrest warrants cannot be served on Tan while he is in Asia.

Di Martino, who is leading the investigation from Cremona in northern Italy, said Tan will “almost certainly” go on trial in Italy, but likely in absentia. Italy has no extradition treaty with Singapore, but the Italian Justice Ministry said the Asian city-state could still send over a wanted suspect under “friendly terms” if it chooses. Di Martino said relations with Singapore authorities “have not been great. We had hoped for more.”

“At first we actually thought they could be brought to Italy, but that calculation was wrong,” Di Martino said. “If Tan Seet Eng goes somewhere else, he could be extradited, as long as there’s an extradition treaty with that country.”

In Singapore, police spokeswoman Chu Guat Chiew said authorities there are reviewing the information submitted by the Italians before deciding what to do, adding: “So far, Dan Tan Seet Eng has not been charged with any offence in Singapore.”

Police have questioned dozens of people in Italy, searched the homes of players and coaches, and descended on the Italian national squad’s training camp early one morning in May 2012. But Di Martino said the investigation has turned up only limited information about Tan.

“We don’t know much about him. We don’t know if he’s a legitimate businessman involved in illegal activity, or if he’s involved in money laundering,” Di Martino said. “We’re only interested up until a certain point; then it’s Singapore’s problem.”

Much of what European law enforcement authorities have learned about Tan comes from a former associate, Wilson Raj Perumal. A match fixer, also from Singapore, he was arrested in Finland in February 2011, convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for bribing Finnish league players. To Finnish police, Perumal portrayed the syndicate as a well-oiled and structured business, financed and led from Singapore.

The syndicate mainly places bets in China, Perumal said, according to a transcript of his May 18, 2011, police interview obtained by the AP. He said the group fixed “tens of matches around the world” — in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas — from 2008 to 2010. He estimated the group’s total profits after expenses at “several millions of euros, maybe 5-6 million” — $7 million-$8 million.

The syndicate leader decides which matches to fix and how much to wager, organizes the betting and the drops of bribe money, Perumal said in the transcript. He later identified that leader as Tan, according to the Italian court documents. Italian police traveled to Finland to interview Perumal, Di Martino told the AP. Perumal declined AP requests for an interview.

Perumal told the Finnish police that money was transported from Singapore in couriers’ pockets or on their bodies. Italian prosecutors suspect the quick trip to Milan’s airport was one such drop. The suspected courier’s checked luggage weighed 9 kilograms in Singapore but 8 kilograms when he flew back. They said the suspected courier likely delivered “a sum of money hidden in some sort of container, which was destined to finance the organization’s illicit activity.”

AP could not contact Tan in Singapore. Five phone numbers identified as his by Italian prosecutors were disconnected. No one answered the door at an apartment the Italians listed as his address. Mail and flyers stuffed under the door and in the door frame suggested no one had been there for a while.

The New Paper in Singapore reported that it spoke to Tan in 2011.

“Why I’m suddenly described as a match-fixer I don’t know. I’m innocent,” it quoted him as saying. It quoted Tan as saying he was briefly involved in a business venture that Perumal started, “but I took my name out of the company after I smelled something fishy.”

“Maybe that’s why he had named me to investigators,” he continued. “Anybody involved with Wilson gets bad luck. He has a criminal record. It’s not good for Singaporeans to do business with him.”

Perumal alleged to Italian investigators that Tan places syndicate wagers on fixed games using legal, Asia-based online betting sites — he named three of them — via intermediaries in China. In Shenzhen, a southern China city adjacent to Hong Kong, a 1 million euro wager on a game in Serie A, the top Italian league, can be placed this way in a couple of minutes, he told the Italians. That method matches those described by betting experts.

Investigators say such gambling operations hire workers to rapidly place thousands of small online bets — maybe no more than $1,000 each — on fixed games. The scattershot of small bets, rather than several large ones, can help hide fixes from monitoring companies in Europe that use computer software to look for unusual wagering.

“They employ kids and they employ people in Singapore and Malaysia to do that for them,” said Chris Eaton, former head of security for FIFA, soccer’s governing body. “They virtually have a sweatshop, if you like, of people with a large number of credit cards and laptop computers, and they punch those things when they are given the green light.”

“Dan Tan comes with very good Oriental connections, meaning he’s not running as a single financier. He has an organization behind him,” said Eaton, now director of sport integrity at the International Centre for Sport Security, a Qatar-backed group funding efforts to research the extent of match-fixing and ways to combat it.

Eaton’s successor as FIFA security director, Ralf Mutschke, said last year that the news media have overstated Tan’s alleged role in match-fixing, and that he probably isn’t “as involved as everyone is thinking” and has only “symbolic importance.”

“But you give him a name, so everyone is talking about Dan Tan, and Dan Tan syndicates, and Dan Tan here and Dan Tan there,” Mutschke said. “If we kill Dan Tan then you will have no match-fixing? No, I think it’s not as easy as this.”

Soccer gambling thrives in Cambodian border town

POIPET, Cambodia (AP) — Soccer betting is illegal in Cambodia, but visitors to this seedy frontier town wouldn’t know it.

In the rundown market where the smell of incense mixes with rotting garbage, betting goes on 24 hours a day inside shiny, glass-fronted parlors emblazoned with photos of famous European soccer players. Fidgety men break from lines of computers displaying odds to place bets with cashiers on matches around the world, from the obscure leagues of India and New Zealand to the giants of Europe.

“We can’t always pronounce the teams we are betting on, but that doesn’t matter,” said Sampoath Pererra, a Sri Lankan palm oil worker who has made his life in Poipet, a two-street town sandwiched between the Cambodian and Thai borders. “The important thing is we can recognize them.”

Poipet has a long association with gambling. In the early 1990s, the government allowed casinos to be built there, and the gaudy, mostly threadbare venues continue to attract thousands of customers from Thailand, where all forms of gambling are illegal.

Soccer bookmakers — also illegal in most Asian countries — have sprung up inside the casinos and in nearby streets.

The cash bets placed with the bookies in Poipet and the many more via websites operating out of the town form part of a billion-dollar unregulated industry in Asia that is at the heart of match-fixing. To spend a weekend there is to see up close the region’s obsession with soccer gambling, as well as some of the challenges facing those who seek to keep the sport clean.

While bets of upward of $50,000 on a single game are not uncommon in Asia, most wagers are much smaller, reflecting average incomes in a region that remains mostly poor. On a weekend in late November, there were few big bettors in Poipet, little glamour and many tales of lives taken over by gambling.

In the snazziest of the town’s bookmakers, called footballbet.com, a gap-toothed Singaporean who gave his name only as Michael needed several late goals and turnarounds to win his $25 wager on a series of five matches.

As the final whistle approached on several matches in England’s Premier League, his hope slowly turned to disappointment.

He fingered his betting slips in the manner of gamblers around the world, and a 6-year-old boy whom he referred to as his son bounded from his lap to the floor of the bookmakers, playing in the cigarette ash left behind.

Authorities turn a blind eye to the bookmakers, even those who operate outside the casinos, which are run by powerful tycoons with links to the corruption-riddled government in Phnom Penh, the capital.

In September, police arrested 100 Indonesians in Phnom Penh for illegally running a soccer betting site from two houses in the city.

One bookmaker’s Malaysian manager, who refused to give his name because of the illegal nature of his business, conceded that the operation was running “on borrowed time.”

The websites operating in the town employ Indonesians, Thais and other nationalities on telephone help lines and computer chat rooms to assist people setting up accounts in their home countries.

Rooms in hotels and casinos are rented out to these operators, giving the town something of a gold rush atmosphere.

Poipet is a town where few would choose to live unless they were making money, or have gambling addictions to feed.

In the daytime, trucks carrying squealing pigs roll through town, as do vehicles full of foreign tourists on their way to the ruins of Angkor Wat, Cambodia’s iconic 12th century temple.

By night, touts on motorbikes patrol the main drag offering women and drugs, while children beg. A stinking, rubbish-clogged river dissects the town.

Unlicensed Asian betting sites and bookmakers like those in Poipet function as unofficial agents of the larger Asian betting operators, most of them based in the Philippines. Unlike in regulated markets, syndicates are able to place bets anonymously, with no cash trail to follow or betting patterns to examine if fixing suspicions emerge, said David Forrest, an applied economist who specializes in sports gambling at the University of Salford Business School in Britain.

“Asia is the dominant betting market, even though the sport is European. And most criminals, whether they come from Asia or Europe, will place the bets in Asia because of the non-regulated sector of that market,” he said. “It’s a huge market, and easy to hide money.”

Bookmakers and bettors alike in Poipet are aware that some matches are fixed, but such information is closely held by the syndicates and doesn’t reach ordinary gamblers. The Premier League is regarded as fix-proof, but the Italian, Russian and smaller Asian leagues are suspect. The gamblers say it doesn’t affect their betting.

– Chris Brummitt

International

Serbia says expulsion from 2015 U21 Euros avoided

NYON, Switzerland (AP) — Serbia has survived the threat of expulsion from the 2015 European Under-21 Championship by UEFA over racist abuse directed by fans at England players.

UEFA’s appeals panel declined the option Friday, instead ordering Serbia to play two U21 qualifiers in an empty stadium. The judgment is likely to fuel debate on how football authorities deal with discrimination in stadiums.

In a separate ruling Friday, UEFA cleared Steven Caulker to play for England at the 2013 U21 Euro tournament in Israel by lifting his two-match ban. The Tottenham defender was involved in clashes between Serbia and England players and coaches after the final whistle of a volatile playoff in Krusevac last October.

“Steven Caulker is issued with a warning in respect of his future conduct and the player undertakes to perform one full day of community football service,” UEFA said in a statement.

However, England midfielder Thomas Ince had his one-match ban upheld. He will miss a June 5 match against Italy in Tel Aviv, if selected for the tournament.

Caulker and Ince, who plays for second-tier Blackpool, both addressed the appeal panel which sat in session for seven hours at UEFA headquarters.

“Both players should be proud of the way they represented themselves,” England U21 coach Stuart Pearce, who also attended, said in a statement published by the English Football Association. “We respect UEFA’s decision and we will now move on and focus on the Finals tournament.”

UEFA had sought tougher sanctions when it requested a complete review of widespread sanctions arising from a match marred by monkey chants aimed at England players.

The English FA also challenged its players’ bans, arguing they were provoked amid a hostile atmosphere that sparked a post-match melee.

The appeals body weighed a report from UEFA inspectors suggesting it could banish Serbia from the next U21 competition, and increase a fine of €80,000 ($107,000).

Panel members chose to uphold the fine, though doubled a one-match stadium closure imposed in December at a UEFA disciplinary hearing.

Then, Serbia Football Association general secretary Zoran Lakovic had acknowledged: “We are under special UEFA scrutiny and even the smallest next mistake could lead to rigorous punishment.”

Lakovic declined to comment on leaving UEFA.

Serbia’s hooligan fans have been a persistent concern for European football’s governing body.

Two years ago, UEFA President Michel Platini warned then-state President Boris Tadic in Belgrade that national and club teams faced suspension from UEFA competitions if it did not act to curb the problem.

England went to provincial Krusevac holding a 1-0 lead from the first leg and the team was targeted by fans throwing coins and objects during the game.

The post-match brawl began after England defender Danny Rose complained of monkey chants whenever he touched the ball. He was sent off after the final whistle for after kicking a ball into the stands, gesturing to the crowd as he walked off the pitch.

Four Serbia players and two coaches also received UEFA suspensions in December, and midfielder Nikola Ninkovic had his two-match ban increased to three on Friday.

The Serbia U21 team will play behind closed doors in its next two qualifiers in a 2015 group that includes Italy, Belgium, Cyprus and Northern Ireland.

Earlier Friday, Platini attended a meeting of FIFA’s Strategic Committee which pledged to introduce stricter punishments for discrimination at matches.

“The aim is to present to the FIFA Congress in Mauritius (on May 31) concrete actions, as well as strong sanctions, which will really have an impact,” FIFA President Sepp Blatter said in a statement.

– Graham Dunbar

Soccer to propose sanctions for racist abuse

ZURICH (AP) — FIFA aims to approve tougher sanctions for racist abuse at soccer matches when its 209 member nations meet at the FIFA Congress in May.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter led a meeting Friday of its Strategic Committee, which included UEFA President Michel Platini, and discussed combatting racism and match-fixing.

Blatter has previously said point deductions and relegation punishments are needed as disciplinary options to help deal with discrimination at matches.

When FIFA judged abuse cases against Hungary and Bulgaria last month, both countries were ordered to play their next home World Cup qualifier in an empty stadium and pay fines.

“I am very pleased with the ideas that have evolved today and look forward to the deliberations with the Executive Committee,” Blatter said in a statement regarding the FIFA board meeting on March 20-21.

The FIFA Congress will meet May 31.

“The aim is to present to the FIFA Congress in Mauritius concrete actions, as well as strong sanctions, which will really have an impact,” he said.

UEFA signaled its dissatisfaction with the level of disciplinary sanctions by asking its appeal panel to consider tougher punishments for Serbia after a volatile under-21 match against England in October.

That case was heard Friday as the FIFA committee — which also includes European Club Association chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, five-time Women’s World Player of the Year Marta and Spain coach Vicente del Bosque — met in Zurich.

This year, black players targeted for abuse by fans include the widely reported case of AC Milan midfielder Kevin-Prince Boateng at an exhibition against a fourth-tier Italian club. He left the field and was joined by teammates in ending the match in protest.

Fans also directed chants toward United States forward Jozy Altidore while playing for AZ Alkmaar in a Dutch Cup match.

FIFA announces Confederations Cup prize money

ZURICH (AP) — FIFA will pay $4.1 million in prize money to the Confederations Cup winner..

FIFA says $20 million in total prize money will be shared among eight teams playing in the World Cup warm-up event in Brazil from June 15-30. The prize fund was $17.6 million at the 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa. There, Brazil got $3.75 million for winning.

FIFA says the beaten finalist will receive $3.6 million; the third-place team earns $3 million and the fourth-place team gets $2.5 million.

Four teams not advancing from the groups each make $1.7 million.

The lineup of continental champions is: Host Brazil, World Cup and European champion Spain, Euro 2012 runner-up Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Tahiti and Uruguay.

Soccer Capsules: Police track elusive figure in soccer match-fixing