THE trial of three Conference South players accused of conspiring to take match-fixing bribes has heard that they were paid less than £4,000 between them.
Michael Boateng, Hakeem Adelakun and Moses Swaibu were all at Whitehawk in the early part of the season, before a Daily Telegraph and National Crime Agency investigation led to their arrests last November.
The trial at Birmingham Crown Court began last Monday and is expected to last up to five weeks.
The trio are charged along with Singaporean businessmen Chann Sankaran and Krishna Ganeshan, with the pair said to be central figures in the alleged conspiracy to alter the results of games.
The three players were described in court as “willing recruits”, with Boateng and Adelakun – both 22 – given £367 each in separate meetings with the businessmen in a Croydon coffee shop to “act improperly” to swing the result of a game they would be playing in on November 30.
Swaibu, 25, had already left Whitehawk by then and is said by prosecuting lawyer Robert Davies to have acted as a middleman between players and the Singaporeans in an attempt to fix a League Two game between AFC Wimbledon and Dagenham & Redbridge.
He was paid £3,000 at half-time of the match, and when Swaibu met Sankaran and Ganeshan in an Indian restaurant after the 1-1 draw on November 26, they were arrested. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by anyone involved or connected with either club.
At meetings secretly recorded in Manchester, Ganeshan and Sankaran met with an undercover NCA officer, posing as a financial backer named Ed, who had £60,000 of marked cash.
Davies read transcripts from a meeting at the Great Northern Warehouse on November 21, where Sankaran was asked which teams he had under his control. He replied: “One is Bromley and one is Whitehawk.”
The following day the three players were supposed to meet Sankaran, Ganeshan and the potential backer, known as Ed, at the Marriott Victoria and Albert Hotel.
Davies said it was part of the prosecution’s case that the latter three were recorded talking about fixing a game the following day at Bromley, where Sankaran and Ganeshan allegedly suggested they had control of five players.
Ganeshan said: “One goal, first half, two goals, second half. We double up (our money) because Bromley is three to one odds.”
The men deny all the charges and the trial continues.
