Wilson Raj Perumal has been labeled the world's most prolific match-fixer in football's recent history. Born a village boy in rural Singapore in the mid-60's, Wilson climbed the heights of international match-fixing across five continents, becoming FIFA's most wanted man. Like a "guppy in the sea", Wilson starts off a small gambler, mixing with the local Singapore bookies, and witnesses the rise and fall of the old-school Asian "big fish" of match-fixing until he finds himself competing against them in a world with no set rules, where turncoats are the norm and quick money the only drive. Perumal was arrested in Finland in February 2011 and decided to collaborate with authorities, thus opening the match-fixing Pandora's box. In his book, Wilson reveals an unprecedented account of how the international match-fixing underworld has influenced the outcomes of matches at every level of football that we may well have watched unsuspectingly. Kelong Kings is the ultimate tale about gambling, football and match-fixing, told directly by the man who made it all happen. But be advised, after you read this book, you will never be able to watch a soccer match in the same way again.
The book is a grammar of the Makasar language, spoken by about 2 million people in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Makasarese is a head–marking language which marks arguments on the predicate with a system of pronominal clitics, following an ergative/absolutive pattern. Full noun phrases are relatively free in order, while pre-predicate focus position which is widely used. The phonology is notable for the large number of geminate and pre–glottalised consonant sequences, while the morphology is characterised by highly productive affixation and pervasive encliticisation of pronominal and aspectual elements. The work draws heavily on literary sources reaching back more than three centuries; this tradition includes two Indic based scripts, a system based on Arabic, and various Romanised conventions.
Sport is a global phenomenon engaging billions of people and generating annual revenues of more than US$ 145 billion. Problems in the governance of sports organisations, fixing of matches and staging of major sporting events have spurred action on many fronts. Yet attempts to stop corruption in sport are still at an early stage. The Global Corruption Report (GCR) on sport is the most comprehensive analysis of sports corruption to date. It consists of more than 60 contributions from leading experts in the fields of corruption and sport, from sports organisations, governments, multilateral institutions, sponsors, athletes, supporters, academia and the wider anti-corruption movement. This GCR provides essential analysis for understanding the corruption risks in sport, focusing on sports governance, the business of sport, planning of major events, and match-fixing. It highlights the significant work that has already been done and presents new approaches to strengthening integrity in sport. In addition to measuring transparency and accountability, the GCR gives priority to participation, from sponsors to athletes to supporters an essential to restoring trust in sport.
Between June and July 2010, 64 games of football determined that Spain was the world's best team at the World Cup in South Africa. South Africans – and the world – celebrated a brilliantly hosted tournament where everything worked like clockwork and the stands were packed with vuvuzela-wielding fans. But the truth was not yet known. Behind this significant national achievement lay years of corporate skulduggery, crooked companies rigging tenders and match fixing involving the national team. As late as 2015 it was revealed that the tournament's very foundations were corrupt when evidence emerged that South Africa had encouraged FIFA to pay money to a bent official in the Caribbean to buy three votes in its favour. As Sepp Blatter's FIFA edifice crumbled, a web of transactions from New York to Trinidad and Tobago showed how money was diverted to allow South Africa's bid to host the tournament to succeed. In The Big Fix: How South Africa Stole the 2010 World Cup, Ray Hartley reveals the story of an epic national achievement and the people who undermined it in pursuit of their own interests. It is the real story of the 2010 World Cup.
WHEN IT COMES TO SHAPESHIFTING PARANORMAL ROMANCE, WHO CAN RESIST... New York Times bestselling author Angela Knight, USA Today bestselling author Lora Leigh, and national bestselling authors Alyssa Day and Virginia Kantra? Whether transforming under a blue moon or prowling the streets, the shifters come alive to fulfill the wildest of fantasies in this seductive anthology by four masters of paranormal romance.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH From the New York Times bestselling author of Loving Frank comes a much-anticipated second novel, which tells the improbable love story of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny. At the age of thirty-five, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne has left her philandering husband in San Francisco to set sail for Belgium—with her three children and nanny in tow—to study art. It is a chance for this adventurous woman to start over, to make a better life for all of them, and to pursue her own desires. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her children repair to a quiet artists’ colony in France where she can recuperate. Emerging from a deep sorrow, she meets a lively Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who falls instantly in love with the earthy, independent, and opinionated “belle Americaine.” Fanny does not immediately take to the slender young lawyer who longs to devote his life to writing—and who would eventually pen such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson’s charms, and the two begin a fierce love affair—marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness—that spans the decades and the globe. The shared life of these two strong-willed individuals unfolds into an adventure as impassioned and unpredictable as any of Stevenson’s own unforgettable tales. Praise for Under the Wide and Starry Sky “A richly imagined [novel] of love, laughter, pain and sacrifice . . . Under the Wide and Starry Sky is a dual portrait, with Louis and Fanny sharing the limelight in the best spirit of teamwork—a romantic partnership.”—USA Today “Powerful . . . flawless . . . a perfect example of what a man and a woman will do for love, and what they can accomplish when it’s meant to be.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram “Horan’s prose is gorgeous enough to keep a reader transfixed, even if the story itself weren’t so compelling. I kept re-reading passages just to savor the exquisite wordplay. . . . Few writers are as masterful as she is at blending carefully researched history with the novelist’s art.”—The Dallas Morning News “A classic artistic bildungsroman and a retort to the genre, a novel that shows how love and marriage can simultaneously offer inspiration and encumbrance.”—The New York Times Book Review
The sustainable forestry challenge. The failure of implementation of forestry laws in Brazil. Enforcement of forestry laws in Finland. Analysis and recommendations.
“978-88-3324-087-9” Passi di: “MATCH FIXING”. iBooks. Who is behind match fixing? How is it done, and to which aim? In 2015 we wrote for Minerva Edizioni Game Over: a report targeted at practitioners, and more specifically at investigators. Since we did not want the book to be too ponderous, we provided a succinct description of a few topics that might have been interesting reading material even to “non-professionals”. These topics are dealt in depth in this volume: the history of match fixing, odd anecdotes and current state of affairs, the profile of its main characters and the explanation of the mechanisms (and complex motives) behind the swindle as well as the role played by the mafia. You will not find any footnote: instead, the bibliography, at the end of the book, will provide you with book references as well as internet links, all relevant and interesting, although some of them, in our opinion, are a “must” for those who really wish to acquire a deep knowledge of the topic. This is why we highly recommend them to you. The Fix by Declan Hill (2007) is a comprehensive book on the birth of modern match fixing and its close ties to the mafia. In 2014 Brett Forrest published The Big Fix where he recounts the never-ending fight between law enforcement and match fixers. But the real masterpieces on the subject are a book and... a very long judicial document. The book is the autobiography of one of the most notorious match fixers in the world: Wilson Raj Perumal, Kelong Kings, written by two Italian scholars, Alessandro Righi and Emanuele Piano. The judicial document is the ordinance issued by Cremona judge, Guido Salvini, in the maxi investigation on Scommessopoli that took place a few years ago (no doubt a less casual reading, yet dramatically concrete): hundreds of pages packed with wiretaps, explanatory notes of criminal mechanisms and charges that brought to its knees, at least for a while, match fixing in the Italian peninsula. The only sources that we left in complete anonimity are those players, who over time have become our friends: they described to us the insider’s point of view, the existing dynamics in the dressing rooms, the problems and weaknesses of the athletes themselves, the ongoing match fixing techniques. At the beginning of this long journey we took their stories with a grain of salt, “perceiving” them as the fruit of their imagination...but this is not the case anymore! In reality football is not the only sport (nor was it the first) where match fixing took place: actually, in recent years other sport disciplines were targeted by match fixers. In this book we only hint at the story and trends of the swindle outside of football pitches, and yet it is in the world of football that the mafia invests massively its own resources, and where match fixing is not the sole objective of this criminal enterprise. One last remark: this is not a diatribe of a book, and where it was possible to report an event without mentioning the name of players who were disqualified or investigated, we did so: the only difference between them and many others (just as guilty as they were) lies in the simple fact that they got caught.
Game of Shadows meets Among the Thugs in this revelatory true-to-life crime thriller and expose involving greed, corruption, an Asian crime syndicate, and the fixing of international soccer matches at the highest levels of the game, including the UEFA Champions League and the World Cup. In February 2013, the director of Europol, the European Union's law enforcement agency, made the shocking announcement that 700 international soccer matches had been fixed since 2008, including World Cup qualifying and exhibition matches, with a Chinese criminal syndicate pulling the strings. For the first time, investigative journalist Brett Forrest takes us inside the underworld of one of organized crime's most profitable businesses—a $1 trillion annual international betting market, of which soccer comprises 70 percent. Forrest uncovered a web of nefarious dealings across the world, even on U.S. soil. As he found, no match is safe—not even the World Cup tournament—and law enforcement officials lack the resources to stop it. But one man has taken this criminal enterprise on: Chris Eaton, former head of security for FIFA. Now with the International Center for Sports Security in Qatar, this rough and tumble Australian and longtime Interpol cop has tracked down some of the biggest fixers and their financial backers and continues his mission to clean up the world's most popular sport. Filled with headline making revelations, The Big Fix is must reading for soccer fans and true crime aficionados.
As the first systematic attempt to probe the linguistic strategies of Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism, this book investigates three areas: deconstructive strategy, liminology of language, and indirect communication. It bases these investigations on the critical examination of original texts, placing them strictly within soteriological contexts. Whilst focusing on language use, the study also reveals some important truths about these two traditions and challenges many conventional understandings of them. Responding to recent critiques of Daoist and Chan Buddhist thought, it brings these two traditions into a constructive dialogue with contemporary philosophical reflection. It discovers Zhuangzian and Chan perspectives and sheds light on issues such as the relationship between philosophy and non-philosophy, de-reification of words, relativising the limit of language, structure of indirect communication, and use of paradox, tautology and poetic language.
