'Kelong king' Wilson Raj convicted of human trafficking in Hungary after fleeing S'pore in 2010
Zaihan Mohamed Yusof
The Straits Times
Nov 23, 2025
A fugitive from Singapore, who is accused of crimes including forgery in Finland, managed to avoid jail time while living in Hungary, where he served as a state witness in match-fixing trials.
But Wilson Raj Perumal finally faced the music after he was convicted over human trafficking charges.
His hearing in May never made headlines in Budapest, but The Straits Times learnt that the 60-year-old was sentenced to 11 years' jail.
He is appealing against his conviction and sentencing.
A spokesperson for the chief prosecutor's office of Hajdu-Bihar county in Hungary confirmed the conviction.
"I would like to inform you that in May 2025, the Nyiregyhaza Regional Court issued a verdict convicting the defendant, which, however, has not entered into force.
"The prosecution took note of the verdict, but based on a defence appeal, the case will continue in second instance, and the Debrecen Regional Court of Appeal will make the decision," said the spokesperson, who did not provide dates for the appeal hearing.
ST had previously reported that Wilson Raj was arrested in July 2020 after the authorities in Hungary launched a probe into his role in a human trafficking network.
According to police documents, he was investigated "for the crime of human trafficking committed by assisting several persons to cross the state border for the purpose of financial gain".
He has been living in Hungary since 2012, where he provided expert testimony for match-fixing trials there.
Wilson Raj, who was once described as the king of match fixing – "kelong king", in colloquial terms – was picked up on July 27, 2020, in Debrecen, Hungary's second-largest city, outside the home of his former wife Bella Istenes.
Ms Istenes, 34, a Norwegian national, was arrested after returning from a trip to Sweden. She was released and is now believed to have returned to Norway with the couple's four children.
Under Hungarian law, the penalty for human trafficking carries a jail term of between one and 20 years, depending on the severity of the crime and whether the people were trafficked for the purpose of sex or labour.
The Singapore Police Force (SPF) had tried to have Wilson Raj extradited to Singapore but were thwarted by European laws in 2014.
This was after Finnish police arrested him in 2011 over match-fixing allegations but later handed him over to the authorities in Hungary.
Finnish police told SPF then that they were "unable to accede" to the request to send the match-fixer back to Singapore, as they were "bound by European Union laws to return him to Hungary".
He had fled to Europe after a Singapore court found him guilty of various offences, including assaulting an auxiliary police officer. He was sentenced in 2010 to five years of corrective training.
He left using a forged passport while out on court bail pending his appeal against the sentence.
In an April 2021 letter to a relative, seen by ST, Wilson Raj wrote that he was concerned with the prospect of being deported after his arrest in the human trafficking probe.
"Do you know if I loose (sic) this case I will be deported back (to Singapore). I cannot afford to loose (sic) this case... I cannot implicate others in this case. If I do, I am implicating myself," he wrote.
He had earlier written that he needed money from his family while in a Hungarian cell waiting for his hearing.
"I will need around 75,000 Hungarian money (S$294) to sustain myself in prison... That will last for a whole month."
Life of crime
Even as he served as a prosecution witness in Hungary, he never gave up his life of crime.
After fleeing Singapore, he was arrested in Finland in February 2011. An unnamed Singaporean had alerted a police station in Rovaniemi, Finland, about Wilson Raj's forged passport.
As the Finnish authorities dug into his background, they learnt that he was behind a spate of suspicious football results in the country.
Between 2008 and 2011, he bribed 11 foreign football players in the Finnish football league with €470,000 to influence the results of more than 30 matches.
He tried to avoid jail time by providing Finnish investigators with information that resulted in major investigations and arrests in Italy, Hungary and Singapore.
Among other things, he disclosed that he was part of a match-fixing syndicate with ties to Balkan shareholders, allegedly led by Singaporean businessman Dan Tan Seet Eng.
Wilson Raj was eventually sentenced to two years' jail, but served only one year. He was then handed over to the authorities in Hungary in 2012 to help with match-fixing investigations there.
In Singapore, 14 of his former associates were arrested in 2013 in the wake of a crackdown on match fixing.
He was jailed a second time in Finland in 2014, when he was arrested for a border offence and forgery.
For a few years after, it appeared he had gone quiet.
But it later emerged that he was fixing match results again, this time in Sweden.
Before their arrest, Wilson Raj and Ms Istenes were in Sweden to ink a deal with Swedish Division 1 football team Nykoping BIS.
Ms Istenes was there as a representative of Sugar Computing, supposedly an e-sport programming company based in Debrecen.
The deal was signed on July 24, 2020, between Ms Istenes and representatives of the club.
Not long after, Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter revealed that there had been attempts to influence matches played by the club.
Investigators later learnt that the parent company of Sugar Computing was Hong Kong-based firm Living 3D Holdings.
The firm had been implicated in 2019 in an international investigation into allegations of match-fixing in the Kenyan Premier League.
Investigators in Sweden also established links between Wilson Raj and convicted Singaporean match-fixer Chann Sankaran, who used to live in Hungary.
Despite being a fugitive, Wilson Raj did not shy away from the spotlight. A resident of Hungary since 2010, he posted photos of himself on Facebook at international football matches and while partying at nightspots in the country.
He even published a book he co-wrote, titled Kelong Kings, and appeared in documentaries on CNN in 2016 and the documentary Football Underground in 2021.
His associate Dan Tan, once described by Interpol as "the leader of the world's most notorious match-fixing syndicate", was detained in Singapore under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act in October 2013. He was released in November 2015 when the Court of Appeal ruled that his detention was unlawful.
Sankaran was jailed in England in 2014 over match-fixing charges.
