“Why had I not met you before? You know exactly what you have to do and you deliver it single-handedly.”
High praise from the high priest of football match-fixing globally.
These words are from a memoir “Kelong Kings” described by its publishers as the “ultimate tale about gambling, soccer and match-fixing, told directly by the man who made it all happen.”
The man was Wilson Raj Perumal, one of the shareholders of a Singapore-based match-fixing syndicate that manipulated the outcome of football matches worldwide so as to bet on the rigged results.
Singaporean Perumal spoke as he reportedly struck a deal in 2010 with Willis Ochieng, a Kenyan goalkeeper who was then playing in the Finnish top league.
The goalkeeper is alleged to have been paid twenty-five thousand euros (6 million Kenyan shillings) to fix two games with Perumal gushing in his praise, “Willis proved to be the kind of player that match-fixers want for their business; convinced and dedicated.”
Despite the details of the deal being spelt out in Perumal’s book, football’s world governing body FIFA found the Kenyan goalkeeper had no case to answer.
Fast forward 11years later and Willis having retired from active professional football now works as a goalkeeper trainer in the Kenyan Premier league (KPL).
For the last 4 years he had been tasked with sharing his skills with the goalkeepers of KPL defending champions Gor Mahia.
How a player whose name on Google search reveals his match-fixing past was not only able find work in the KPL but on the technical bench of the perennial champions should be cause for concern.
39-year old Willis, born and bred in the slums of Mathare in Nairobi and known in football circles as Awilo resigned his position at Gor Mahia last month claiming his abrupt departure was because he had not been paid for 14 months.
However, his exit coincided with a probe instigated by Gor’s officials to investigate whether a string of poor results by the team was as a result of some players and technical officials being involved in match-fixing.
Willis continues to plead his innocence but Kenyan football lost its innocence long ago.
As far back as 2009 Perumal had an association with officials in the Kenyan football federation (FKF). Through his wheeler-dealing national football teams participated in tournaments across the globe that are mentioned in “Kelong Kings” as having being manipulated for financial gain.
The dalliance culminated in the fixing of Kenya’s 2010 World Cup qualifier against Nigeria that eventually saw defender George “Wise” Owino banned for 10 years from all football related activities by FIFA and handed a hefty fine.
In February 2020, FIFA banned four East African players for manipulation of matches during the 2019 KPL season. This as dubious Singaporean companies purported to sponsor teams in the KPL with a curious provision that they be allowed to introduce players – normally defenders and goalkeepers – into the teams. As recently as January 2021, a Ugandan was arrested in Kisumu allegedly trying to fix a KPL match pitting Western Stima against KCB.
European betting is mostly premised on results: win, draw or loss but Asian betting is more about goals scored, conceded and at what time. This makes it harder to detect a match that is being manipulated especially in a league setting.
According to “Kelong Kings”, “if you have a league club, you let it play, because this is your chicken that’s going to give you an egg every week: a golden egg.”
The KPL has a total of 34 games in a season all which are available for betting and whose results are updated in real-time making the Kenyan top flight league a golden goose for betting syndicates.
How golden? According to the book, illegal Asian betting syndicates powered by live betting reportedly make over a million US dollars in profit from a single fixed match.
To ensure that the goose keeps laying the eggs, the match-fixers are willing to splurge. Perumal shares that, “In 2008, the market rate for players was around 20 thousand US dollars per match for a goalkeeper and 10 thousand US dollars for a defender. While sixty thousand US dollars bought you the full set of referees (1 centre ref and 2 assistants).”
When you consider these amounts in the backdrop of the poverty that engulfs Kenyan football it is clear that the managers of football in the country have their work cut out to rid the beautiful game of the match-fixing stain.
However, this may prove to be tough as Kenyan football currently runs on betting money. BetKing is the title sponsor of the KPL while OdiBets are so-called motivational partners of Harambee Stars.
This sticky situation is aptly captured in “Kelong Kings” as Perumal states, “Nowadays football equals gambling plus live betting and betting companies provide a good portion of the money needed to keep the whole circus afloat.”
After reading the “Kelong Kings” one cannot help but look at football in a new light. Thinking how much of what is cheered on so loudly is real and how much of it is fake.
The book also shows the mindset of a compulsive gambler as Perumal gambles away millions of dollars in matches that he has not fixed.
The “Kelong Kings” which is currently only available on Kindle on Amazon with the paperback version out of stock should be a must read for all football fans.
Fair warning though, the book is mostly written in Perumal’s words and the language is crude and his prejudice seeps through.
Patience is required as the book builds up slowly starting in rural Singapore before going on to touch all the corners of the globe in an astonishing web of corruption and greed.
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A silver lining over the cloud of match-fixing that hangs over the Kenyan football is the fact that NTV’s Idah Waringa and former Daily Nation football writer Jeff Kinyanjui were recently feted by the International Sports Press Association (AIPS) for their investigative reporting on the scourge on various Nation Media Group platforms.
Moderate Kenyan 