In this regular feature in IAG to celebrate 18 years covering the Asian gaming and leisure industry, we look back at our cover story from exactly 10 years ago, “Caught in the net”, to rediscover what was making the news in March 2013!
Inside Asian Gaming went a little left field for our March 2013 cover story, taking a deep dive into the world of match-fixing and the role Asia was playing in this growing game of cat and mouse.
With the annual value of global sports betting estimated at around US$500 billion at the time, of which 90% was bet on football, our story was born out of a press conference held in early February 2013 by Europol in which it outlined the shocking findings of an 18-month investigation into match-fixing, and from the testimony of a former match-fixing ringleader himself, Wilson Raj Perumal, who told authorities upon his arrest of a global syndicate running match-fixing out of Singapore.
The Europol press conference was indeed eye-opening. Director Rob Wainwright, who described it as “a sad day for European football”, revealed that 19 months of work conducted in partnership with Interpol and police from 13 EU states had uncovered 680 “suspicious” games worldwide dating back to 2008, 380 of them in Europe, including World Cup and European Championship qualification matches, two UEFA Champions League matches and matches in several top intrastate leagues. More than 400 players, referees, club officials and “serious criminals” had been involved.
Sportradar, which has long monitored such action and continues to do so to this day, said there were at least 300 crooked games played in Europe each year, while UEFA estimated match-fixing raked in around US$15 billion annually.
Meanwhile, Mr Perumal’s insights into his former syndicate following his arrest told of a massive operation that rigged games out of Singapore and which, IAG wrote, included games “in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, North and South America, in elite divisions and in the bushes, wherever players, managers, coaches, referees, team executives, owners, anyone capable of manipulating the action on the pitch, is willing to take a bribe.”
Perumal said he was one of six “shareholders” in the organization, which counted another Singaporean called Tan Seet Eng, or Dan Tan for short, as its ringleader. The syndicate was linked to organized crime in eastern Europe and was heavily responsible for the rigging of games across the European continent, particularly in Europe.
Ironically, their house of cards began to crumble when Perumal was given US$500,000 to purchase a small Finnish football club for the purposes of match-fixing but instead pocketed US$300,000 to pay off his own gambling debts. He later blamed his arrest on being set-up by his fellow syndicate members.
Tan was then one of 14 arrested by Singapore authorities just months after IAG’s story was published. He served six years in prison for his crimes before being released under supervision in December 2019.
Despite that syndicate being disbanded, match-fixing remains an ongoing concern for authorities. As recently as January, 23 members of an alleged betting syndicate were arrested in Spain on suspicion of fixing matches in Spain, Gibraltar and Andorra, with several players among those detained.
Meanwhile, sports betting monitoring firm SIS released in February its latest insights which showed suspicious betting activity on 144 matches in 2022, including 46 in Asia – up from 31 a year earlier, Clearly, this is an issue that won’t be disappearing anytime soon.
