AFP/Singapore


The notorious alleged mastermind of a global match-fixing ring was in custody in Singapore yesterday after a crackdown on one of the gangs linked to hundreds of rigged football games worldwide.
A source told AFP that Singaporean businessman Dan Tan, full name Tan Seet Eng, was among 14 people held in raids this week. Police said the gang’s “suspected leader” was arrested, without giving a name. His arrest appears to be a step forward in Singapore’s fight against match-fixing syndicates linked to scandals in several countries including Italy, Germany and Hungary.
Dan Tan was among 12 men and two women arrested. He and four others out of the group were denied bail. They are being held under a law, usually applied to criminal gangs, which allows for detention without trial.
A statement from Singapore’s police and anti-corruption bureau said those held in the 12-hour operation were suspected of “being part of an organised crime group involved with match-fixing activities”. Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble, who has previously called for Dan Tan’s arrest, described the operation as an “important step in cracking down on an international match-fixing syndicate by arresting the main suspects in the case, including the suspected mastermind”.
Chris Eaton, former head of security for football’s world governing body FIFA, told AFP the arrests “are very significant operational steps against one particular Singapore gang for fixing matches and creating betting frauds”.
European policy agency Europol has linked criminal gangs in Singapore to revelations that hundreds of games worldwide, including World Cup qualifiers, were targeted by fixers.
Dan Tan’s name first came to prominence when arch Singaporean fixer Wilson Raj Perumal was arrested and jailed for rigging matches in Finland. Perumal said he was a double-crossed associate of Dan Tan. But the ethnic Chinese businessman, who appears chubby and round-faced in photographs, has protested his innocence.  
“Why I’m suddenly described as a match-fixer, I don’t know. I’m innocent,” he told Singapore’s The New Paper in 2011, his only known media interview.
Italian investigators have since issued a warrant for Dan Tan’s arrest over the wide-ranging ‘calcioscommesse’, or football betting, scandal, which implicated a swathe of big names and clubs. In May, Singapore police said Tan was “assisting investigators in Singapore”. In the same month he was charged in Hungary over the alleged manipulation of 32 games in three countries. Eaton, a former Interpol officer and now the director of Sport Integrity at the Doha-based International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS), described Tan’s detention as “a very significant arrest”.
“I think it is extremely important  for the global efficacy of football and for, in fact, the eradication of the organised crime groups that are operating in this area,” he said.
Neil Humphreys, a Singapore-based  football writer, said the wealthy Asian state had taken its time in making arrests “as authorities wanted to compile enough evidence to take down the entire syndicate”.