adminThey were made aware that Zimbabwe’s involvement was a small part of a well-organised, worldwide network of similar activities affecting several countries.
They also got to know how Wilson Perumal Raj the mastermind behind Zimbabwe’s participation in trips to Asia and Europe’s cover was blown.
In its report the ethics committee noted that The Spectator of 28 July 2012, noted that; “In the birthplace of sport — where else but Greece — football is as rotten as anywhere on earth, except in places like Thailand, where betting comes first and sport second.
“Football now is as corrupt as gambling, and may be soon we’ll see the latter becoming an Olympic sport. I don’t know about today, but Greek referees in my time were easily and often bribed, as are refs and players being bribed as I write in most parts of the world, even in Europe, although here only in lower divisions. It is almost impossible to control and even more difficult to prove, but for a determined gambler, a poor referee or player in a small South American country, or an African or Far Eastern one, is a hands down prey.”
Another article described the arrest in Finland of betting syndicates kingpin and a key figure in Zimbabwe’s trips to Asia as having been dramatic. A man in the city of Rovanieni told police that Raj was travelling on a fake passport.
After three days of surveillance Raj was arrested after having been spotted insulting players of one of the teams — Palloseura.
On his arrest Perumal confessed to rigging hundreds of games across five continents, generating hundreds of millions of dollars.
Raj’s arrest was a result of him being turned in by one of his own who had lost out a fortune.
In the ethics committee’s report they acknowledge that soccer is corrupt with match-fixing ongoing in more than 25 countries.
Several cases have come to the fore about matchfixing since last year.
“Operation last bet hit the Italian Football Federation, with 22 clubs and 52 players awaiting trial for fixing matches, the Zimbabwe Football Association banned 80 players from its national team selection due to similar accusations; Lu Jun, the first Chinese referee of a World Cup match, was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison for taking more than $128 000 in bribes to fix outcomes in the Chinese Super League; prosecutors charged 57 people with matchfixing in the South Korean K-League, four of whom later died in suspected suicides.”
In Hungary a team director jumped off a building after six of his players were arrested for fixing games.
In one of the most daring instances, Turmeinistan reportedly beat Maldives 3-2 in a match neither country knew about.
Bookmakers still took action and fixers still profited.
The ethics committee believes match-fixing is a worldwide crime, on par with drug trafficking, prostitution and the illegal trade in illegal weapons.
“As in those criminal enterprises, the match-fixing industry has been driven by opportunistic greed,” noted the ethics committee.
They wrote that 70 percent of the $1 trillion of sports betting industry is derived from soccer gambling.
They felt that $350 that Fifa pays referees was a recipe for match-fixing as stakes were higher on the illicit dealings shores.
Paying referees and officials is one way to manipulate results but this is not enough, coaches and players have to be in it.
Raj is believed to have paid up to $5 000 per fix to a player in Central America, Middle East and Africa.
He is believed to have taken advantage of the fact that in some of the countries players earned barely enough to support their families, so they became easy targets.
Within months the lives of those players took a turn.
It said Raj became so connected that he would field calls on the sidelines from coaches to influence results.
He is said to have at one time boasted that he was in better control of the Syrian Football League that Assad was over his people.
According to former Fifa investigator Chris Eaton, Raj once lost $10 million when he turned to gambling instead of his fixing where he was a master. He placed nets on Manchester united and Chicago Bulls.
To recover that money, Raj decided to “short” the syndicate. It is said instead of fixing a match, he would keep the $500 000 that the bosses would have forwarded to him to set it up, hoping the right team would win legitimately and by the proper score.
This led Raj to being in deep debt owing one boss as much as $1 million and $500 000 to another and $1,5 million to somebody else.
In one glaring instance, he allowed impostors to pose as the Togo national team and play a friendly at Bahrain on 7 September 2010.
“It was so obvious — Bahrain’s then head coach, Joseph Kickrsberger, said afterward that the Togo team was ‘not fit enough to play 90 minutes’ — that the ensuing media coverage drew attention to a possible fix.”
In Finland, where Raj had been running fixes for a cartel headed by Dan Tan Seet Eng, a club there had generated so much cashflow that they had even planned on buying it to ensure guaranteed revenue. Raj sabotaged the purchase as it would have sabotaged his gambling for which he still needed money to recover.
He swindled his handlers who had given him $500 000 to buy the club, forwarding just $200 000 and keeping the rest to himself.
Raj had even created a Facebook page, which included pictures of himself with players and contact information of European criminal colleagues.
In one fix in Antalya, Turkey, Raj’s assistant Santia Raj staged the biggest fix of his life. It was two friendlies at the seaside resort town Latvia versus Bolivia and Estonia versus Bulgaria. What Santia did not know was that the games were under suspicion before they began and what even raised further fears was the fact that the referees appointed were inexperienced and made available just before the game.
Eaton informed Sportrada, a gambling watchdog group based in London. They monitored over 300 gambling sites worldwide using proprietary algorithms to identify abnormal activity in the market.
They discovered that there was severe support for more than three goals in both games this was nowhere near logic with about $5 million Euros bet per match.
This revealed the artless contempt the betting syndicates had for international soccer with the goals generating seven goals, all scored on penalty kicks. After a Latvian player missed a penalty the referee ordered a retake.
Fifa then contacted Santia by e-mail and he believed that Raj had tipped off the international soccer body leading to Raj being arrested. This was after Santia sent a low-level runner to Rovaniemi, where he walked into the police station and ended Raj’s match-fixing career.
Raj has served his sentence in Finland and is being kept at a safe house in Hungary where he is co-operating with Fifa and other European organisations about the syndicate’s operations
He is facing charges in Hungary too.
Raj was mentioned by several of Zimbabwe’s witnesses as having been a key element in Asiagate.
It appears syndicates are well-funded and in one instance they had as many as five members with a Zimbabwe team, staying at the same hotel, escorting them, going into team talks and telling them to play to instructions and what scoreline to meet.
Raj is alleged to have paid as much as $100 000 to arrange friendlies for countries like Bolivia and South Africa, often pairing them against higher-profile teams that wanted ready-made exhibitions. In such instances he selected referees in some cases and in some of the matches he would just rent a stadium to facilitate his game and deeds.
One agent is said to have sat on the Warriors bench and issued instructions. Match-fixing is believed to be still going on in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the world and Zifa will soon embark on education programmes to warn players about corruption in the game.
Evidence provided proved that defenders and goalkeepers and technical team members were the most affected.
Online Reporter