RoPS match-fixing scandal case continues in Court of Appeal

Wilson Raj Perumal

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Who paid, how much, and to whom for the fixed result of a football match?
      These were among the questions that the Rovaniemi Court of Appeal had to explore when the Zambian former players of the Rovaniemen Palloseura (RoPS) football club and the Singaporean Wilson Raj Perumal outlined their involvement in the match-fixing allegations regarding a game between RoPS and PS Kemi.
     
The end result of the game played in August 2010 was 0-0, which is what Perumal had hoped for. According to Perumal, the six Zambian and two Georgian players who featured in the game were paid EUR 80,000 in total. The players themselves claimed that the sum was half of this.
      Perumal repeated in court that behind the arrangement there was a group of five individuals, who invested in the bet around EUR 300,000. Perumal himself raked in several tens of thousands of euros.
     
On Tuesday the court heard four of the players through a video link. Christopher Musonda, who sat in front of a camera in Lusaka, Zambia, remembered that in his apartment in Rovaniemi EUR 40,000 had been placed on the table, of which sum he received EUR 5,000 after the game. According to Musonda, all the players still emphasised that they would only play for victory.
      Nchimunya Mweetwa, who was paid EUR 7,000, also spoke of EUR 40,000, even though originally there had been talk of a sum twice as high.
      What seemed to remain unclear was who eventually took the money, who divided it between the men after the game, and how much was ultimately given to each player.
     
All the players, who challenged the earlier district court verdict, called for the past sentences to be reduced. Some of them insisted that they be overturned altogether.
      The Court of Appeal will pronounce its decision in about a month’s time at the earliest.
      in July of last year, the Lapland District Court July ruled that nine RoPS players were guilty of taking bribes, and handed down suspended sentences of between six months and twenty months on the players.
      At the same trial, the same Wilson Raj Perumal was given a two-year prison term.
      The case revolved around a total of 26 matches allegedly arranged between 2008 and 2011, half of which ended with a scoreline that was satisfactory for the interests betting on the outcome.
     
     
The linked article from August last year contains a good deal of detail on the rash of match-fixing allegations that have hit Finnish football in recent years.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Own goal: the remarkable allure of Finnish football for Asian betting syndicates (30.8.2011)

See also:
  Match-fixing suspicions widen to cover ten Finnish football games (16.3.2011)
  Central criminal police looking into new and broader bribery connections in Finnish football (9.5.2011)
  Football betting scandal may escalate (18.3.2011)

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