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Cricket’s latest Don pulls the match-fixing strings

Move over Don Bradman. There’s a new Don on the cricketing block and he’s also got a fine set of numbers. Like our Don he can turn a game, though not off his own bat. This Don’s a real operator. He’s made a pile out of the game and his many other business interests.

He’s not yet a household name Downunder, but Dawood Ibrahim may become the biggest thing in cricket. He’s been in the game for more than 20 years and used his cricketing success to fund his numerous other activities.

He’s certainly the biggest thing in South Asian cricket. Through his chain of bookies and standover men he’s doing more to shape contemporary cricket than Tendulkar or our Don did in his day. Dawood may become the most influential figure in cricket history because of his power to corrupt the game’s much vaunted gentlemanly code.

Should this man be in charge of world cricket?

Cricket’s had a bad few weeks. Kiwi batsman Lou Vincent and Pakistani journeyman, Naved Arif, have been charged with match-fixing by the English and Wales Cricket Board. Meanwhile, details have been leaked of Kiwi captain Brendon McCullum’s evidence before a closed session of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Security Unit. McCullum admitted he’d been approached to fix matches in the IPL and during the Kiwis’ 2008 English tour.

Cricket authorities must realise they are fighting a losing battle.

These recent airings have done little to ease concerns about match-fixing. As Ian Chappell recently suggested, “if you came out and said all players are clean from any country, you’d be off your rocker.”

But the problems extend far beyond the boundary.

Few Australians have looked at Dawood’s CV. It’s impressive. His D-company has not only built an illegal gambling and match-fixing empire, but also managed to diversify into global terror. This has placed him beyond the reach of cricket’s anti-corruption unit and most police and intelligence agencies. Since the 1980’s both police and security have shown a mind-boggling inability to shut down Dawood’s empire.

He got his start in the 1980s in Mumbai’s lucrative drug and prostitution market. But he was ambitious. With the help of his brothers, Anees and Sunil Sawant, and his side-kick, Chhota Skakeel, Dawood diversified his earnings into property and Bollywood. He bankrolled Bollywood careers and films, though at cost. Lending at high interest rates to both actors and producers, he bought access and influence and, if the rumours are to believed, the occasional starlet.

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The aftermath of the 1993 Mumbai bombings, in which 257 people died. Dawood Ibrahim was alleged to have orchestrated the attacks. Photo: AAP

In 1987 he shifted his headquarters to the Gulf and was a regular at Sharjah’s ODIs. He quickly realised there was a rupee to be made out of cricket. He established a bookie chain, cultivated players and began manipulating the odds and fixing matches.  By the late 1990s £6.5 million was being wagered on a single ODI and Dawood’s chain had a fair slice of the market.

But Dawood was no normal racketeer. He had scruples.  He was a Muslim operating in a Mumbai market increasingly controlled by the Hindu right-winger Bal Thackeray, and his Shiv Sena thugs.

With the destruction of Ayodhya’s Babri Mosque in 1992, tensions boiled over in Mumbai.  Over 900 people were killed in riots, including 575 Muslims.  A disturbed Dawood turned Jihadist and from his Dubai base allegedly orchestrated the 1993 Mumbai bombings which killed 257 people.

After the blasts, he fled to Karachi. He was protected by Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, and the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET).   According to US Treasury intelligence, he had a longstanding relationship with LET. Indian intelligence held that LET pocketed 30 per cent of Dawood’s crime revenues in return for its protection.

His whereabouts were well known. He bought a compound – the White House – with a gym, pool and tennis court in the up-market Karachi suburb Clifton, and maintained his criminal network in India.

Through his Jihadist network, he established ties with Al Qaeda. When the Clinton Administration froze Al Qaeda’s funds in 1999, Dawood allegedly used his connections in the drug and diamond trades to help bankroll the group’s operations. US intelligence suspected Al Qaeda used Dawood’s smuggling routes, which extended across the subcontinent, Africa and the Middle East, to export terror into Europe.

After 9/11, the Bush Administration attempted to crack down on Dawood’s activities, declaring him a “specially designated global terrorist” and freezing his assets. He was also placed on the UN sanctions list as an Al Qaeda associate. The measures were stunningly ineffectual.  Dawood still commuted freely between Pakistan and the Gulf, while his criminal and jihadist empires flourished.

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Pakistan’s Mohammad Asif was jailed and received a seven-year ban for spot fixing in 2010. Photo: AAP

Rumours circulated in the press that he was involved in the 2008 attacks on Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Hotel. In 2010 Der Spiegel alleged Dawood’s network smuggled Al Qaeda operatives into Germany. They intended to carry out a Mumbai-style attack on the Reichstag.  At the same time, a US Congressional report declared Dawood “a direct threat to US interests in South Asia.”

The bookies were so successful that by the 1990s they’d roped in some of cricket’s biggest names: Hansie Cronje, Mohammad Azharuddhin, Salim Malik, Shane Warne and Mark Waugh.

By this time American and Indian intelligence had little idea of Dawood’s whereabouts. As Mumbai Police Commissioner Himanshu Roy speculated, “[Dawood] knows where he is, but I’m not sure if anyone [else] does.”

By 2011 Indian intelligence advised the CIA Dawood may have moved to the Saudi city of Jeddah. Apparently the Pakistanis were no longer keen to host him. He’d fled after the American attack on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in May.

According to intelligence, Dawood feared a similar fate if he stayed in Karachi. He figured neither the Americans nor Indians would touch the “holiest place in Islam”. Chotta Shakeel lived there and so Jeddah joined Dubai and Karachi as a base for D-company business.

Despite his terrorist activities, Dawood maintained his cricket and Bollywood connections. In July 2005 his daughter Mahrukh married Juniad Miandad, the son of former Pakistani Test cricket great Javed.

Closely watched by US and Indian intelligence, the wedding took place in Mecca, while the reception was staged in the Dubai Hyatt. Dawood didn’t attend either.

That he ‘brazenly” staged the reception in an ostensibly American hotel infuriated the Indian Government and US mission in Delhi. The Delhi embassy suggested Washington send “a strong signal” to the Hyatt chain that doing business with “a man who is on the US government’s list of foreign terrorist entities” was intolerable.

Dawood remained a thuggish power in Mumbai. The Americans noted he still had a wide network of “friends and associates” and was “a force” in the city’s underworld. India’s Intelligence Bureau monitored his phone calls to contacts in the “business and entertainment world”.  But neither the Indians nor Americans could curtail his activities.

Both were aware Dawood’s network extended into the Mumbai police force. To control underworld activities, the Mumbai police supposedly employed “hitmen to carry out extra-judicial killings of highly sought-after individuals”. The executions had “no legal basis” and were carried out “under the guise of a shoot-out”. The police would later state they acted in “self defense”.

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Hansie Cronje was given a lifetime ban for match fixing. Photo: Getty

But the method proved ineffectual in Dawood’s case. According to intelligence sources, hitmen were not beyond taking bribes and so Dawood was left “free to cast a broad and sinister web of influence in India”.

But Dawood was hanging around dressing-rooms. In the 1986 Australasia Cup final in Sharjah, he bounded into the Indian dressing-room and offered each team member a car if they beat Pakistan. India’s captain Kapil Dev chucked him out.

One of the more profitable parts of his crime chain was his extensive illegal bookie network. With so many ways of betting available, cricket proved attractive to punters, bookies and fixers. Punters could bet on the toss, a single ball or the result of a match. From his base, Dawood controlled the odds and bought off players who wanted to make a bit on the side.

It was a well-worked routine. A bookie would approach a player for information on team selection or match conditions. He’d then invite the player to have a punt. Once compromised, the player was ripe for the fix. He’d earn a tidy sum, but Dawood and his boys pocketed the bulk.

The bookies were so successful that by the 1990s they’d roped in some of cricket’s biggest names: Hansie Cronje, Mohammad Azharuddhin, Salim Malik, Shane Warne and Mark Waugh. In 2005 the Ahmedabad crime branch pulled in bookie Shobhan Mehta. During questioning he alleged Azharuddhin, Waugh and Cronje had been in contact with Indian underworld figures.

All of these players were suspended or fined for their links with Indian bookies. Their prime contact was not Dawood, but the Delhi bookie Mukesh Gupta. But Dawood was hanging around dressing-rooms. In the 1986 Australasia Cup final in Sharjah, he bounded into the Indian dressing-room and offered each team member a car if they beat Pakistan. India’s captain Kapil Dev chucked him out.

He was mentioned in Justice Qayyum’s report into match-fixing in Pakistani cricket. During a Sharjah match in 1999, Dawood allegedly phoned the Pakistani all-rounder Wasim Akram to tell him the fix was on. In his final report Qayyum recommended Wasim should never again captain Pakistan.

Dawood was also involved in Marlon Samuels’ downfall. The West Indian player had struck up a friendship with Mukesh Kochar, a Dubai-based bookie who issued bets in India on Dawood’s behalf. Kochar was rumoured to be on good terms with Indian, Pakistani, Australian and West Indian players.  He had met Samuels in Sharjah during 2002. The bookie claimed to be a father figure to the West Indian. But as Indian police phone taps revealed, Kochar milked Samuels for information on match conditions and West Indian team selection.

When the ICC investigated the Samuels case it found little to link Kochar to bookmaking or Dawood. Samuels was the real culprit, copping a two-year ban. But others were well aware of Kochar’s underworld connections.

Nagpur’s deputy police commissioner Amitesh Kumar declared Kochar “a known associate” of the Don. The Times of India went further. It alleged Kochar was ‘a friend’ of the New Delhi bookie and controller of Dawood’s Indian betting operations, Kamal Kishore Chadha. According to a New Delhi police dossier, Chadha had introduced Kochar to Dawood. If the ICC had dug a little deeper, it would have linked the Samuels case to Dawood’s crime syndicates and jihadist networks.

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Indian quick Sreesanth was banned for life after being found guilty of spot-fixing. Photo: Getty

Dawood was also involved in the 2013 Rajasthan Royals’ match-fixing episode. The former Indian pace bowler Sreesanth and his Royals’ teammates Ajit Chandila and Ankeet Chavan were arrested in May 2013 for spot-fixing.  D-company’s fingerprints were all over the fix. Police phone-taps revealed D-company threats to Chandila for going against the orders of Dawood’s bookies.

Dawood’s hold on the Indian game is every bit as impressive as Pablo Escobar’s infiltration of Colombian football during the 1990s.

But the major figure in the fix was Sreesanth.  His distant cousin Jiju Janardhan was a bookie connected to Sunil Dubia. A close aide of Dawood’s brother Anees Sunil had a keen eye for potential spot-fixers.

In the days preceding the fix, Janardhan had worked the phones. According police intercepts he’d spoken with D-company fixers in Dubai, Kararchi, Mumbai, Jaipur and Delhi.

But the web extended beyond Janardhan. Further police intercepts, revealed Dawood and Chotta Shkaeel had masterminded the fix from Dubai. The go-between was Dr Javed Chutani who looked after Dawood’s real estate interests in Dubai. He’d contacted Dawood and D-company bookies who, in turn, got the players on-side.

It took over 2000 police phone taps to break the betting ring. Thirty-nine were arrested, including the three players, while another 100 bookies remained under investigation. The extent of the betting network surprised even the police.

“We cannot go on making arrests as the list of bookies would keep growing,” one officer said.

“These arrests could only be part of one of several chains operating under the protection of the Dawood gang.”

Within days the Chennai Super Kings were embroiled in a betting scandal with the arrest of Gurunath Meiyappan, the son-in-law of BCCI President N Srinivasan. Meiyappan was arrested with Bollywood actor Vindoo Dara Singh on charges relating to spot-fixing. Police are investigating Meiyappan and Singh’s links to Ramesh Vyas, the head of Dawood’s southern Indian betting operations.

Dawood’s hold on the Indian game is every bit as impressive as Pablo Escobar’s infiltration of Colombian football during the 1990s.

Cricket authorities must realise they are fighting a losing battle. Don Dawood has won. His business network extends from the terror cells of north Pakistan to the tip of the BCCI. Not bad for a bloke who got his break peddling drugs from Bombay brothels.

Dr Tom Heenan lectures in sports history at Monash University

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