Daily Advertiser – The alleged financier and organiser of an international syndicate accused of rigging soccer matches has been arrested with 13 others in Singapore, only days after the Victorian Premier League arrests shocked Australian sport.
Singaporean Dan Tan Seet Eng, 49, employed Wilson Raj Perumal, the alleged mastermind of Australian match-rigging, investigators told Fairfax Media.
But investigators said the two men had a spectacular falling out over Mr Perumal’s gambling problems and Mr Tan had sent him to Europe in an attempt to set him up for arrest. That backfired when Mr Perumal became a supergrass under police protection in Hungary, investigators said.
Singaporean authorities confirmed that 12 men and two women aged 38 to 60 were detained in a 12-hour operation.
Names were not released, but investigators confirmed that Mr Tan, who has been linked to dozens of alleged match fixes in Europe, was among them.
European police earlier this year named Singapore as a base for an international syndicate that had fixed hundreds of matches across the world.
Mr Tan was indicted last year by Italian and Hungarian prosecutors for alleged match-fixing.
An Italian inquiry had painted a sketchy picture of Mr Tan and his syndicate, which used Milan as a gateway for their operations in Italy. They stayed at hotels near Milan’s airport. Mr Tan always paid the bills in cash.
One of the matches he is alleged to have fixed is a match in Tuscany on May 23, 2010, one of hundreds of games on which European law enforcement focused during a two-year investigation.
