By Andrew Warshaw
September 16 – Football’s most notorious match-fixer is believed to have played a prominent role in Australia’s biggest scandal of its kind where police arrested 10 people at the weekend.
All the arrests are connected with the Southern Stars club in the local Victorian Premier League and are reported to include a number of players who used to play lower-league and non-league football in England and Scotland before moving to Australia.
Police believe Singaporean Wilson Raj Perumal, responsible for a string of criminal activities across the globe and at one point jailed in Finland, may have been behind the Australian case even though he is supposed to be under police protection in Hungary while acting as a supergrass helping authorities there probe match-fixing in eastern Europe.
The Australian investigation was prompted by information provided to the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) by Sportradar, the world’s leading experts in betting fraud detection, while authorities are also reported to have been aided by Chris Eaton (pictured), former security director at FIFA and now playing a prominent role with the Qatar-based International Centre for Sport Security.
“The integrity of football is paramount,” FFA chief David Gallop said after the arrests were made. “We provided information to Victoria Police within 24 hours of receiving an alert from our international betting integrity monitoring agents. We’re determined to keep football clean. Alongside other sports bodies in Australia and globally, we must eradicate corrupt behaviour from sport. The arrests today show that the integrity measures put in place by FFA are working to detect illegal betting activity.”
Police Deputy Commissioner Graham Ashton said that winnings on the bets were estimated at around A$2 million and alleged that the players had been paid thousands of dollars.
If found guilty the players are likely to receive life bans and could be jailed for up to 10 years. They are reported to include Nick McKoy, a defender who played in the English Football League for a string of lower-league clubs, and also briefly in Scotland; and David Obaze, who had a long career at non-league level in England.
Media reports in Australia claimed Peramul was responsible for recruiting some of the alleged culprits and Eaton said the arrests were “abject proof of the endemic nature of corruption in football”.
“The issue of corrupting players is so internationalised and so normalised, football needs something drastic to overcome what is a massive problem for the sport,” he said.
Eaton has been investigating Perumal’s activities for years and questioned how he was able to allegedly fix matches in Australia while apparently under police control.
“It is absolutely shocking. It also shows how arrogant and how fearless these people are.”
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