Punters can place so-called "spot bets", where they wage money on specific incidents happening in a match Photo: ALAMY
BST 07 Apr 2013
Poipet, a grimy gambling den near the Thai frontier that is stuffed with
casinos, illegal betting shops and brothels, has emerged as the "Las
Vegas" of southeast Asia's illegal gambling trade, now thought to be
worth nearly £1 billion annually.
The role of Asian betting syndicates, who collude with corrupt players and
officials, was highlighted in a Europol report two months ago that disclosed
the scale of match-fixing now taking place around the world.
It revealed how hundreds of high-profile games, including Champions' League
matches and World Cup qualifiers, are thought to have been rigged over the
last four years, with nearly £2 million changing hands in bribes. Europol
believes that many of the bets are placed via unregulated bookmakers in
gambling centres like Poipet, who deal with both online and walk-in punters.
Only last week, a soccer referee and his two assistants were being questioned
by Singapore corruption authorities over possible match-fixing ahead of an
Asian Football Confederation Cup game.
Last month, The Sunday Telegraph visited Poipet, where the Manchester
United and Liverpool logos that festoon the windows of many bookmakers show
the popularity of betting on Premier League games. But the town will offer
odds on nearly any league or match in the world, be it New Zealand versus
Russia or Greece under-16s vs Kazakhstan under-16s.
As well as betting on the results of matches, punters can place so-called "spot
bets", where they wage money not on a result, but on specific incidents
happening in a match, such as who will get yellow cards or when a linesman
might raise his flag. Spot bets are considered far easier to fix as they
require not the bribing of a whole team but just a single player or official
– and in South East Asia's unregulated gambling world, they will often
attract individual wagers of up to £50,000 a time.
"Of course we are operating illegally; soccer gambling is against the law," said Rothana, a cheerful 25-year-old Cambodian running a bookmakers named 776win.bet, where punters sat at a line of computers as if in an internet café. "But we pay the police to let us operate."
Poipet, which sits near the border with Thailand, is one of the few places in Cambodia where casino betting is legal, just as casinos in America are restricted largely to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. But alongside the officially-sanctioned roulette wheels and blackjack tables has sprung up a separate, illegal business of bookmakers offering odds purely on football fixtures.
Such a wealth of gambling opportunities now attracts hundreds of thousands of punters every year to Poipet, some Cambodian and some from neighbouring Thailand, where betting is likewise illegal. Many take advantage of free buses laid on from Bangkok by the casinos, who will even give each passenger a few complimentary gambling chips in their bid to draw in customers.
Despite the immense profits generated by the gambling industry, Poipet is somewhat lacking in Vegas-style glitz. Separated from Thailand by a fetid, rubbish-strewn river, its dirty streets coat everyone and everything in yellow dust. Outside the betting shops, barefoot children beg and prostitutes prowl for customers. The motorbike drivers who act as taxis also offer drugs at knock-down prices.
"It's a lawless place and scary because of that," said Pan, a Thai man who runs a bar in Poipet. "There aren't many police here, so if you have a problem you can't count on them to solve it.
That lack of law enforcement has allowed the underground football betting industry to flourish here, with English football attracting much of the betting action.
The bookmakers and websites based in Poipet are part of international chains that lead back to the criminal gambling gangs of Singapore and China. It is they who are believed to be behind the match-fixing scandals plaguing football leagues across the world.
In February, Europol, the European Union's law enforcement agency, announced the results of an 18-month investigation into match-rigging. It revealed how some 680 games in 30 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe and South America were believed to have been fixed between 2008 and 2011. Among them was said to be Liverpool's 1-0 win over the Hungarian team Debrecen in the group stage of the 2009–10 UEFA Champions League.
Both Europol and FIFA, the world football administrator, believe the man responsible for much of the match-fixing is Tan Seet Eng, better known as Dan Tan. A 48-year-old ethnic Chinese Singaporean, allegations of Mr Tan's involvement in match-rigging became public after telephone references to him as 'Il Boss' emerged in a 2011 Italian police investigation into fixed games in Italy's lower divisions.
In February, the acting president of the Asian Football Confederation Zhang Jilong described match-fixing across the region as "pandemic".
Such is the scale of the problem in China alone that last month, David Beckham was appointed as a special ambassador for Chinese football. The Chinese authorities hope that Mr Beckham's squeaky-clean image will help restore local fans faith in the sport, after years of damaging scandals.
It is not hard to establish the ties between the shop front bookmakers in Poipet and the gambling gangs in Singapore and China. "All of the shops are owned by Chinese or ethnic Chinese from Singapore," said Mr Rothana. "My boss is from Singapore. He sent me here to open this place eight months ago. We make around 100,000 Baht (£2,300) a day."
At another shop in Poipet named 333casino.net, the workers were all Chinese nationals. When The Sunday Telegraph asked to make a wager on Swansea v Arsenal, the bet was laid via a Chinese language website in mainland China.
"The first Chinese in Poipet came here in 2008," said one of the staff, a 30-year-old woman who wanted to be known only by her nickname of Xiao Li. "Now, some other members of my family have come too because it is such good business."
More than anything, it is the advent of online gaming that has spurred the rise of match-fixing. With gambling illegal in so many Asian countries, a vast and previously untapped market of punters can now bet with the tap of a computer key. In turn, that has been a boon to the match-fixing syndicates, because online betting enables people to gamble while the games are in progress far more easily.
"Football betting began to become popular in Asia after the 1990 World Cup. But it is online gambling that has really enhanced its growth, and that's because it allows for 'live betting'," said Dr Visanu Vongsinsirikul, an expert on football betting at the Centre for Gambling Studies at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
"Gamblers can bet on who will get the next yellow card or corner or goal."
The actual rigging of matches is done in advance by agents – often former Eastern European footballers – who approach corrupt players and officials and then act as go-betweens with the likes of Dan Tan.
They then get hundreds of people to place bets online in locations around southeast Asia such as Poipet – sometimes on the result, sometimes just on which players will get yellow cards or how many goals will be scored. Many bookmakers in the UK refuse to take odds on such "spot bets" precisely because of the fear that they are linked to match-fixing.
In Poipet, much of the spot betting is believed to be done on special "private rooms" available for rent inside the casinos, where access is by fingerprint scanner only. Locals say that inside these rooms, groups of high-rollers, workers speaking a variety of Asian languages take wagers on line and on the phone from high rollers around the region.
Dr Visanu estimates that in Thailand alone, where football gambling is illegal, the industry is worth around 40 billion Baht (£90 million) annually and that amounts to just 10% of the profits generated across Asia each year. So many games are believed to be rigged, that many Asian punters will pay handsomely for advance information on which matches have been fixed.
"Of course we are operating illegally; soccer gambling is against the law," said Rothana, a cheerful 25-year-old Cambodian running a bookmakers named 776win.bet, where punters sat at a line of computers as if in an internet café. "But we pay the police to let us operate."
Poipet, which sits near the border with Thailand, is one of the few places in Cambodia where casino betting is legal, just as casinos in America are restricted largely to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. But alongside the officially-sanctioned roulette wheels and blackjack tables has sprung up a separate, illegal business of bookmakers offering odds purely on football fixtures.
Such a wealth of gambling opportunities now attracts hundreds of thousands of punters every year to Poipet, some Cambodian and some from neighbouring Thailand, where betting is likewise illegal. Many take advantage of free buses laid on from Bangkok by the casinos, who will even give each passenger a few complimentary gambling chips in their bid to draw in customers.
Despite the immense profits generated by the gambling industry, Poipet is somewhat lacking in Vegas-style glitz. Separated from Thailand by a fetid, rubbish-strewn river, its dirty streets coat everyone and everything in yellow dust. Outside the betting shops, barefoot children beg and prostitutes prowl for customers. The motorbike drivers who act as taxis also offer drugs at knock-down prices.
"It's a lawless place and scary because of that," said Pan, a Thai man who runs a bar in Poipet. "There aren't many police here, so if you have a problem you can't count on them to solve it.
That lack of law enforcement has allowed the underground football betting industry to flourish here, with English football attracting much of the betting action.
The bookmakers and websites based in Poipet are part of international chains that lead back to the criminal gambling gangs of Singapore and China. It is they who are believed to be behind the match-fixing scandals plaguing football leagues across the world.
In February, Europol, the European Union's law enforcement agency, announced the results of an 18-month investigation into match-rigging. It revealed how some 680 games in 30 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe and South America were believed to have been fixed between 2008 and 2011. Among them was said to be Liverpool's 1-0 win over the Hungarian team Debrecen in the group stage of the 2009–10 UEFA Champions League.
Both Europol and FIFA, the world football administrator, believe the man responsible for much of the match-fixing is Tan Seet Eng, better known as Dan Tan. A 48-year-old ethnic Chinese Singaporean, allegations of Mr Tan's involvement in match-rigging became public after telephone references to him as 'Il Boss' emerged in a 2011 Italian police investigation into fixed games in Italy's lower divisions.
In February, the acting president of the Asian Football Confederation Zhang Jilong described match-fixing across the region as "pandemic".
Such is the scale of the problem in China alone that last month, David Beckham was appointed as a special ambassador for Chinese football. The Chinese authorities hope that Mr Beckham's squeaky-clean image will help restore local fans faith in the sport, after years of damaging scandals.
It is not hard to establish the ties between the shop front bookmakers in Poipet and the gambling gangs in Singapore and China. "All of the shops are owned by Chinese or ethnic Chinese from Singapore," said Mr Rothana. "My boss is from Singapore. He sent me here to open this place eight months ago. We make around 100,000 Baht (£2,300) a day."
At another shop in Poipet named 333casino.net, the workers were all Chinese nationals. When The Sunday Telegraph asked to make a wager on Swansea v Arsenal, the bet was laid via a Chinese language website in mainland China.
"The first Chinese in Poipet came here in 2008," said one of the staff, a 30-year-old woman who wanted to be known only by her nickname of Xiao Li. "Now, some other members of my family have come too because it is such good business."
More than anything, it is the advent of online gaming that has spurred the rise of match-fixing. With gambling illegal in so many Asian countries, a vast and previously untapped market of punters can now bet with the tap of a computer key. In turn, that has been a boon to the match-fixing syndicates, because online betting enables people to gamble while the games are in progress far more easily.
"Football betting began to become popular in Asia after the 1990 World Cup. But it is online gambling that has really enhanced its growth, and that's because it allows for 'live betting'," said Dr Visanu Vongsinsirikul, an expert on football betting at the Centre for Gambling Studies at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
"Gamblers can bet on who will get the next yellow card or corner or goal."
The actual rigging of matches is done in advance by agents – often former Eastern European footballers – who approach corrupt players and officials and then act as go-betweens with the likes of Dan Tan.
They then get hundreds of people to place bets online in locations around southeast Asia such as Poipet – sometimes on the result, sometimes just on which players will get yellow cards or how many goals will be scored. Many bookmakers in the UK refuse to take odds on such "spot bets" precisely because of the fear that they are linked to match-fixing.
In Poipet, much of the spot betting is believed to be done on special "private rooms" available for rent inside the casinos, where access is by fingerprint scanner only. Locals say that inside these rooms, groups of high-rollers, workers speaking a variety of Asian languages take wagers on line and on the phone from high rollers around the region.
Dr Visanu estimates that in Thailand alone, where football gambling is illegal, the industry is worth around 40 billion Baht (£90 million) annually and that amounts to just 10% of the profits generated across Asia each year. So many games are believed to be rigged, that many Asian punters will pay handsomely for advance information on which matches have been fixed.
