Wilson Raj Perumal sits in the Lapland district court in Rovaniemi© Kaisa Kiren/Lehtikuva/Files/Reuters

When Wilson Perumal was in detention awaiting trial he often had to think about Dan Tan, the big boss who would want to take revenge on him.

“If somebody betrays the group, the other members of the group may put your life in danger”, Perumal tells the detectives.

The mobster came clean, nonetheless. Someone from the syndicate had ratted him out. Perumal, too, was out for revenge. Now, he hoped that his candor would pay off in court.

This past week, in Rovaniemi, in northern Finland, Wilson Perumal was sentenced to two years in prison. He had been on the run for many years and had last lived in London-Wembley with a fake passport. His testimony helped reduce the sentence.

Ever more shocking revelations kept emerging

To the investigators, whose main goal is to break up crime rings, Perumal represents a highly valuable source. The man from Singapore is the first ringmember to offer a look into the structure and operation of one of the most infamous betting syndicates in Asia.

For soccer fans, ever more shocking revelations kept emerging over the past summer. Players of the Greece national team, the team manager in Turkey and referees in Hungary are all in detention awaiting trial for their alleged involvement in manipulating soccer matches. Illegal gamblers have seen their profits rise dramatically to 90 billion per year, which, according to estimates by the FIFA, matches the revenue of the legal betting market. The betting mafia threatens to control international soccer.

For a long time, German authorities thought that they had caught a big fish with the apprehension of Ante Sapina and his match fixing accomplices in Berlin. They were sentenced to up to 5 1/2 years. It was only this past week, that the German Soccer Association (DFB) banned the former second division player Rene Schnitzler for 2 1/2 years because he accepted 100,000 euros from a gambling ‘godfather’. The sentences are meant to act as a deterrent. Yet, meanwhile, German investigators assume that the really huge deals are being conducted somewhere else entirely. “You only have to take a look where the high sums are being betted: always in Asia”, says one agent who has been on the mobsters’ trails for years.