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“Offenders will continue to be dealt with firmly under our laws,” the home affairs ministry said today in an e-mailed response to queries on the case of Dan Tan Seet Eng, who has denied his guilt and challenged his detention.
Tan led and financed the global match-fixing syndicate from 2009 to 2013, the government told Singapore’s High Court for a closed hearing last month that just-released court papers detail. The 50-year-old, who says he’s only guilty of illegal soccer betting, lost the bid and has to decide this
month if he wants to appeal, according to his lawyer Hamidul Haq.
Singapore’s jailing of the four men without trial last October was the first time its Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act, introduced in 1955 to combat threats from communism and secret societies, was used against match-fixing suspects. The city state came under international scrutiny after European police body Europol said Tan’s group tried to rig 680 games from 2008 to 2011 including World Cup and European Championship qualifiers.
The men were arrested with the assistance of Interpol and Singapore will continue to support global efforts to stamp out match fixing, the ministry said. The others are a former footballer who coached Tan’s son, an ex-schoolmate and a business associate in a loss-making venture.
Turkey, Egypt
Tan is behind match fixing in at least five countries including South Africa, host of the 2010 World Cup, the government’s lawyers said in court papers. Besides South Africa, he bankrolled rigging in Nigeria and Turkey in 2011, helped arrange for a corrupt referee in Egypt and sent an agent to try to fix games in Trinidad and Tobago, they said.About 200 billion euros ($248 billion) to 500 billion euros are wagered in the international sports-betting market, of which more than 80 percent is illegal, according to a May report by The University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and the International Centre for Sport Security. An estimated $140 billion is laundered yearly through sport betting, it said.
“The Singapore authorities were under huge pressure to take action against me, even though the allegations against me are false and unsubstantiated by evidence,” Tan said in court filings. “Detaining me indefinitely serves no purpose as match fixing has continued despite my detention, because I was never responsible for such criminal conduct.”
Insider Trading
Tan was charged last year in absentia in Italy and Hungary for offenses related to soccer fixing. Neither country has an extradition treaty with Singapore.If anyone identified Tan as the head of a criminal gang, “it is likely because they were put in fear after being threatened with indefinite detention,” he said in court papers.
Match-fixing is akin to insider trading or stock market manipulation in seeking an unfair advantage to make profits, Tan’s lawyers said in court papers. Just as insider traders aren’t subject to detention without trial laws, neither should match-fixers, they said.
Government lawyers said Tan’s claim that Singapore detained him under pressure was “wholly inappropriate and illogical.” His “bare assertions of innocence do not show probable cause that the detention was unlawful.”
Tan should be kept in a maximum-security prison without trial for another year in the interest of public safety, the government’s lawyers said. His detention was extended in September for 12 months.
Public Order
“Tan’s detention went through the rigors of a statutorily mandated multitiered process of determination involving different decision-makers before the detention order against him was made and confirmed,” the Attorney General’s Chambers said in an e-mailed statement.Second Minister for Home Affairs S. Iswaran told Singapore lawmakers in November 2013 that soccer match-fixers are known to resort to violence and threaten public order. The detention law was extended by parliament for another five years. There were 209 detainees as of Oct. 31, 2013.
Match-fixing offenses carry a penalty of as long as five years in jail and a fine of as much as S$100,000 ($76,000) for each count. Illegal gamblers face as long as six months in jail and a S$5,000 fine.
Tan said he gave loans of as much as $100,000 in return for betting tips and sent 390,000 euros to Vienna in bets, friends’ winnings and to buy Hermes bags for his wife.
Prostitutes
Singapore prosecutors in July failed to prove that Ding Si Yang, serving a three-year jail term for bribing three Lebanese referees with prostitutes in a soccer-fixing scheme, was linked to Tan’s gang.Tan claims he was framed by Wilson Raj Perumal, another Singaporean who was jailed for two years in Finland from 2011 for fixing matches there.
“To say I have framed him is absolutely absurd,” said Raj from Hungary, where he moved to after completing his sentence to testify in a trial against Tan.
The two men had worked together for a sports events company and Tan claims payments he made in South Africa just before the 2010 World Cup, for betting tips on friendly matches, were on Raj’s instructions.
“Tan’s relationship with Raj is irrelevant,” the attorney general’s office said in its court filing.
The case is Tan Seet Eng, OS772/2014. Singapore High Court.
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