Cancer of match-fixing in Kenyan football

In June last year, three sharply dressed men arrived at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport from Singapore and headed straight to Sofapaka’s training base in Eastleigh.

Two months later, Paolo Perreira, the youngest of the three men, was caught on camera shaking hands with Sofapaka chairman Elly Kalekwa following the signing of a one-year sponsorship deal.

The deal came just in the nick of time when “Batoto ba Mungu” and all other Kenyan Premier League clubs were struggling financially following the abrupt withdrawal of betting firm SportPesa.

But the particulars of the deal were astounding, if not suspicious. Perreira’s company had pledged to specifically pay for the services of the team’s coach, one Portuguese Divalvo Alves, and five other players. All the six individuals had to be foreigners.

“Immediately after we had signed that partnership, I felt that something was not right. I kept wondering why these sponsors were only interested in paying a foreign coach and the salaries of a foreign goalkeeper and defenders,” Kalekwa told Nation Sport.

Three months into the deal, Kalekwa announced that they had terminated the contract with the Singaporeans, but declined to give any further explanations for this, until now.

“After a few games, I started noticing strange things happening before and during our matches. For three months they had not given even a shilling to the club but were religiously paying the foreign-based players. The moment I raised my suspicion with them, they left the country and cut off all communications with us,” he said.

“I then confronted the foreign players one after the other, and they confessed. They told me that indeed they had been instructed to throw away matches, but that they had not yet started doing it. I had to let them all go because I do not condone match-fixing.”

Nation Sport can reveal all these were part of a match-fixing plan. The company itself has no trace online with Living 3D, a company registered in the USA that has interests in FinTech, eGaming, eCommerce and Cloud Computing, seemingly a totally different entity from the one that entered into a sponsorship deal with Sofapaka.

It is also difficult to get any coaching history of Divalvo Alves, who joined the club as part of the sponsorship deal.

Living 3D Holdings, who had introduced themselves as a sports company based in Singapore, never deposited even a single coin in Sofapaka’s coffers and the club eventually terminated the one-year deal.

In August, Sony Sugar also announced landing a new sponsor in Hong Kong-based Information Technology company Quantdragon Limited. Interestingly, the company also brought in three foreign players, all Ugandans, at the club — goalkeeper James Ssetuba, defender James Kasibante and striker Paul Tumba.

Quantdragon, just like what happened with Living 3D Holdings at Sofapaka, disappeared without a trace just a few months after announcing the sponsorship, without depositing any money to Sony.

There’s no online trace of the company as well and Nation Sport can now exclusively reveal that the Quantdragon Limited and Living 3D Holdings Ltd were operated by the same group of people who were keen to fix matches in the Kenyan Premier League.

“Our agreement was they were to sponsor us with Sh2.8 million per month for a duration of one year, but they started playing games whenever they were supposed to wire money into our accounts.

They eventually stopped picking our calls and we found out they were not genuine,” club CEO Boniface Odhiambo said.

“Part of the deal was that they were to come with their own foreign players and a technical adviser. They were to cater for the costs so we didn’t see anything wrong with it then. We later found out that they had already cut a deal with these players they forced into the club,” he added

“This company was introduced to us by Willis Waliaula. They had already taken up sponsorship at Sofapaka and were very keen on getting another club and he (Waliaula) put in a good word for us,” he added.

Waliaula, a former Harambee Stars, Sofapaka and Tusker team manager would eventually join the club as the new Technical Director.

“They used to stay in posh apartments in Pangani but disappeared and cut all communication. We were left wondering what could have gone wrong only to realise we were dealing with people who were apparently involved in match-fixing,” Odhiambo adds

But Living 3D Holdings was not Kalekwa’s first encounter with match-fixing. At the end of last season, he had to let go of Ugandan goalkeeper Mathias Kigonya after he made a number of identical, blatant mistakes in a number of matches that caused them to lose some games by unbelievable margins.

“He was a very good goalkeeper, but at some point I just started doubting him. I never caught any evidence to show that he was swinging games, but I couldn’t trust him anymore and I asked him to leave,” the Congolese, who has lived in Kenya for more than a decade, said.

His shocking revelation comes just six days after Fifa banned four players for alleged match-fixing in the KPL, with Ugandan George Mandela being banned for life as he was at the centre of it all — coordinating the match-fixing.

The others were Kenyans Moses Chikati, Festus Okiring and Festo Omukoto who were handed four-year bans for conspiring to fix matches while they were employed at KPL side Kakamega Homeboyz.

The four were caught with hard evidence in terms of text messages and they also could not prove the source of funds when quizzed after their financial statements were obtained.

Ugandan Paul Nkata was the coach at Homeboyz during this period. He fled to Uganda after the team chairman Cleophas Shimanyula started investigations over alleged match-fixing.

The Federation of Ugandan Football Associations (Fufa) on Friday announced Fifa had dismissed all the charges against him and the disciplinary proceedings had also been closed.

Nation Sport has pieced together what appears to be a sophisticated, if sometimes sloppy, network that has developed in the local football underworld. But it is not as though the alarm bells have not been clanging.

At around this time last year, former Mathare United defender George Owino was banned for 10 years and slapped with a CHF 15,000 (about Sh1.5million) fine after he was found guilty of match-fixing.

According to the Fifa report released in September 2018, Owino, through 177 e-mail communications exchanged between him and high-profile international match-fixer Wilson Raj Perumal, conspired to manipulate and influence the result of international matches involving Kenya. He has since denied any wrongdoing.

In the case where the Kenyan quartet was banned this week, an unnamed former Kenya international is said to be the errand boy, delivering wads of hard cash to the compromised players, and acting as the contact between the players and the fixers, most of who ply their trade in the Middle East and South East Asia.

Outspoken Wazito boss Ricardo Badoer recently revealed that an unnamed match-fixer was trying to extort money from him claiming he could help turn around the performance of the club, through fixing of games.

“I have seen it twice in my career. The perpetrator will just approach you one day after training and chat you up over several things. He will come again and again until he becomes acquainted with you.

“Once the fixer has gained the trust of a player or group of players, he will ask them to ensure specific outcome in a particular match, such as making sure a minimum number of goals are scored or conceded in a particular match,” said a former KPL player who retired quietly from the game two years ago.

Nation Sport has since established that the vice is not only rampant within Kenyan football, it is also changing. Now, it is no longer about the result. Players are being asked to ensure a certain number of goals have been scored or conceded, regardless of the result of the match.

And to make matters more interesting, some fixers demand that the infield players deliver a pre-arranged signal, such as getting booked in the opening five minutes, to show the fix is on.

A number of suspect results have been witnessed in the KPL, although none of the local football administrative arms have ever caught any players in the act.

The league is also in dire financial straits at the moment following the exit of giant betting firm SportPesa, leaving behind thousands of players who are poorly enumerated, if at all. It is the players that earn the lowest wages that are usually approached by the fixers and offered what appears to be a low-risk opportunity with huge rewards.

Kenyan Premier League players and match officials have also been accused of betting on the same games they feature in.

KPL CEO Jack Oguda said this week that they had indeed received complaints from several clubs regarding match-fixing, but that it was difficult to find the proof to nab the perpetrators.

Paul Rooy, one of the most popular match-fixers in the world, told Mirror Sport from his prison cell in Dordretch: “I’ve heard so many stories about match-fixing and gambling. But people in charge at the top of the game don’t have a clue what is really going on in football.

“Individual football federations do not have the capability to investigate matters themselves — they have to raise it with the police and justice authorities in their own country.”