By Mark Baber
September 22 – Singaporean Rajendran R Kurusamy (pictured), the mastermind behind a conspiracy to fix a Southeast Asian (SEA) Games football match between Timor Leste and Malaysia, was sentenced to four years’ jail in Singapore on Monday.
55-year-old Rajendran was described by the Deputy Public Prosecutor Nicholas Khoo as “Singapore’s most prolific match-fixer in terms of convictions,” and his sentence as the highest “imposed on a match-fixer on a single charge.” In a statement prosecutors said, “In fact, we would go so far as to state that the accused is a criminal match-fixer extraordinaire.”
Rajendran pled guilty to two charges: agreeing to give S$15,000 to the Football Federation of Timor Leste’s technical director Orlando Marques Henriques Mendes, in exchange for arranging for his team to lose their match against Malaysia, and to being a party to a conspiracy to offer bribes to at least seven Timor Leste players in exchange for losing the match.
He received a 42 month sentence for the first charge and a 48 month sentence for the second to be served concurrently.
Rajendran had been hoping for a lesser sentence but his history of fixing football matches both in Singapore and Malaysia counted against him, as did the fact his crimes involved young players from a lesser developed country, were clearly premeditated and were of a transnational nature. He had previously been involved in fixing (at least) eight football matches. In 1997, he was jailed for 18 months and fined $300,000; in 1998, he was jailed for nine months and fined $200,000.
The plot to fix the game was busted shortly after Rajendran made the offers of cash, with officers of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau arresting four men involved including his Indonesian accomplice Nasiruddin who is currently serving a 30-month sentence, Moises Natalino De Jesus, a former Timor Leste football player, and Orlando, allegedly the third co-conspirator and the team manager of the Timor Leste SEA Games football team.
The prosecutors had sought a 4.5 year sentence, hoping to deter similar match-fixing attempts, uphold Singapore’s reputation for probity and as match-fixing “robs from the participants the glory of true sporting achievement, it denies and viewers from witnessing an authentic spectacle and it distorts the betting markets for illegal gain.”
Moises and Orlando have been charged, with their cases still pending.
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