Man who helped match-fixer Wilson Raj obtain 2nd passport gets 34 months' jail
Raja Morgan Chelliah, 36, has been sentenced to 34 months in prison for helping match-fixer Wilson Raj Perumal. Photo: Reuters
SINGAPORE — Not only had he helped match-fixer Wilson Raj Perumal flee Singapore on a passport issued using his particulars instead of Wilson Raj’s, but he had also helped him evade arrest by helping him obtain a second Singapore biometric passport.
For that, Raja Morgan Chelliah, 36, was today (June 23) sentenced to 34 months in prison for three offences - falsifying information in a passport application; selling a Singapore passport; and harbouring Wilson Raj from being apprehended.
Delivering his sentence in court today, District Judge Adam Nakhoda said that one aggravating factor was that Raja Morgan profited from the sale of the passport. He had sold the passport for S$5,000 to an unknown person under Wilson Raj's instructions, and pocketed S$3,000 along the way.
Worst of all, he had provided Wilson Raj with "a means to remain outside Singapore indefinitely".
Wilson Raj - who has claimed to have fixed hundreds of matches worldwide - absconded from Singapore in 2010 while out on bail on an assault case, using a passport issued under Raja Morgan's particulars.
For that, Raja Morgan was jailed a year in 2011. However, during investigations in February that year, he had withheld information that he had helped Wilson Raj obtain a second passport a month earlier.
The second passport bore the photograph of Wilson Raj, but the details of another accomplice, Subramaniam Sellapah. With the second passport, Wilson Raj was able to travel to Finland, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland and South Africa. He was arrested in Finland in 2011.
In the mitigation plea, lawyer Surian Sidambaram, representing Raja Morgan, said his client had no knowledge that Wilson Raj was part of an international fixing syndicate, and that his client only knew Wilson Raj as a wealthy and successful businessman.
To that end, the judge said: "It is disingenuous to claim that (the accused) did not know of (the seriousness). To compound matters, (Raja Morgan) had procured a second passport when Wilson Raj had a warrant of arrest."
He added that Raja Morgan was "an integral part of the entire scheme". "General deterrence is the foremost sentencing principle for passport-related offences," he said.
