SINGAPORE — Dan Tan Seet Eng, the Singaporean businessman accused of running the world's largest football match-fixing syndicate, walked out of the Supreme Court a free man after the Court of Appeal ruled that his detention without trial was unlawful — a decision that drew international condemnation.
Tan was arrested in September 2013 but never tried. With insufficient evidence and witnesses to file criminal charges, the Ministry of Home Affairs invoked the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act — a special anti-gangster law allowing detention without trial — to keep him locked up. But a three-judge panel, Singapore's highest legal authority, ruled the detention unlawful because Tan did not pose a danger to public safety in Singapore.
The court said that while match-fixing was reprehensible and should not be condoned, the alleged acts all took place beyond Singapore's shores, and no evidence had been presented that potential witnesses were being intimidated. Tan, 51, boarded a taxi outside the Supreme Court without speaking to reporters. His lawyer told The Straits Times his client was relieved and grateful for what he called a fair conclusion.
Tan had been accused of directing, assisting and financing the corruption and fixing of football matches in countries including Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria, Turkey and Trinidad and Tobago. Investigators in Europe, including Europol and FIFA, had identified a Singapore-based syndicate as central to a global match-fixing network, with Tan's associate Wilson Raj Perumal arrested in Finland and later entering Hungary's witness protection programme, providing documentary evidence about the operation.
Chris Eaton, the Qatar-based executive director for sport integrity at the International Center for Sport Security, criticised the ruling and urged Singapore to update its laws, warning that the decision put the country back in the firing line after it had been congratulated for leadership in fighting sports corruption. He quipped that if Singapore's law did not fit the modern world, it should be fixed — just as Dan Tan had fixed football matches.
Tan was rearrested in December 2015 on revised detention grounds, but the saga exposed the limits of Singapore's legal toolkit against transnational sports corruption: a man accused of corrupting the world's most popular sport could not be prosecuted at home because his alleged crimes happened abroad and witnesses would not testify.
The case remains the most notorious match-fixing scandal associated with Singapore, a country otherwise known for its zero-tolerance stance on corruption — a stance embodied by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, which has continued to prosecute domestic fixing cases, including the four-year jailing of serial match-fixer Rajendran Kurusamy for attempting to rig a 2015 SEA Games football match involving Timor Leste.