HELSINKI: Infamous Singaporean bookie Wilson Raj Perumal was convicted of bribery, forgery and illegal border crossing and sentenced to two years' imprisonment by Finnish courts.
It remains unclear if Wilson had appealed the sentence.According to the Lapland District Court, Wilson netted about €150,000 (RM640,000) for fixing results in the Finnish football league since 2008.
Wilson targeted a local team in the northern Finnish town of Rovaniemi. He has been in custody since February.
The verdict also saw seven Zambian and two Georgian players of the team handed suspended sentences ranging from six months to 20 months for accepting bribes of €11,000 to €40,000 each to fix matches.
Wilson was arrested in February after entering Finland with a fake Ghanaian pass-port. This was revealed during a Stadium Security and Event Management talk organised by Fifa in Kuwait in April.
Wilson's mentor, Singaporean Rajendran Kurusamy, was charged in Malaysia last month for bribing six players from T-Team in the President's Cup (Under-21) tournament.
Fifa head of security Chris Eaton had disclosed Rajendran as the person instrumental in coaching Wilson and several other individuals to fix match-es in and around the region.
Wilson is also said to be linked to the Malaysia-Zimbabwe fiasco in 2009 which saw Zimbabwean club Monomotapa United mas-querading as the Zimbabwe national team in the Warriors kit while playing two matches against the Malaysian Tigers at the Cheras Stadium.
This was first exposed by Mailsport in its article "Con Deal?" pub-lished on July 13, 2009.Malaysia won both matches 4-0 and 1-0 respectively.Upon investigation, it was found that Zimbabwe FA had fired its chief executive officer Henrietta Rushwaya, who was believed to have had a hand in dealing with Wilson.
The FA of Malaysia (FAM), till today, maintains they played with the Zimbabwe national team as stated in a letter signed off by Rushwaya.
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