Tan, in a rare media interview in 2011, protested his innocence and said he was mystified about why he had been tagged as a match-fixer.
In the book, Zaihan said Tan was living a “fairly visible lifestyle” in early 2013, even after he came into focus in the media as an alleged match-fixing mastermind.
The journalist recalled watching Tan, believed to be 50 years old, play a match for a local amateur side called Oxley City.
“For a fleeting 15 minutes, he came on the pitch and played as though he were a star striker. Tan’s love for the beautiful game was apparent,” Zaihan wrote.
Interviews with Tan’s associates revealed he learned the trade in the early 1990s as an understudy to a veteran match-fixer, said Zaihan, a journalist with Singapore’s The New Paper.
Ironically, Tan was nicknamed “Ah Blur” by associates, a colloquial term used in Singapore to refer to people who are slow to catch on.
Zaihan’s book comes after the April release of a tell-all e-book by Perumal, penned by Italian investigative journalism website “Invisible Dog”.
Perumal claimed in the book that he influenced football games at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
Interpol has said that the ring busted in Singapore was the world’s “largest and most aggressive match-fixing syndicate, with tentacles reaching every continent”.
Experts have said that easy international transport, a passport accepted around the world and fluency in English and Mandarin have helped Singaporean fixers spread their influence abroad with the support of external investors, most believed to be from China.
Sports betting is deeply entrenched in the wealthy city-state, with top European league matches the most favoured among punters. Experts say there are dozens of illegal betting outfits in Singapore offering higher returns.
The Doha-based watchdog group International Centre for Sport Security warned in a May report that Asian-dominated criminal groups are laundering more than $140 billion in illegal sports betting annually.
Singapore’s interior minister Teo Chee Hean in October described match-fixing as a “cross-boundary crime” that requires international cooperation for it to be eradicated.
About The Author
