Undercover reporters offered money, women to fix matches
April 10, 2014 - 1:44am
By: Zaihan Mohamed Yusof
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Undercover reporters Willem Feenstra and Menno van Dongen from Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant were in Singapore to meet up with a Singaporean kelong boss.
Posing as football officials from Roda JC, a club in the Dutch Eredivisie, they met "Victor" in a Joo Chiat pub on Jan 19.
The kelong kingpin offered them women and a deal worth 1 million euros (S$1.7 million) if they were willing to play ball.
All it took were two phone calls to hook up with Victor.
One was to a former investigator in Uefa, European football’s controlling body. He put the reporters in touch with a Singaporean named Sivakumar Madasamy some time last year.
Their next call to Mr Sivakumar, who was told about their real identities, led to an introduction to Victor in January.
Linking with a local kelong kingpin is “as easy as learning the alphabet”, Mr Sivakumar was quoted as telling De Volkskrant on April 5.