SINGAPORE: The small man in the baseball cap looks like any other customer as he watches Euro 2012 in the busy coffee shop. It’s not until he turns and offers a wager that his real intention is revealed.

He is a “runner” for an illegal bookmaker, one of hundreds in Singapore, a foot-soldier in a loose criminal network which rakes in millions of dollars a day across Asia — and is at the root of a global epidemic of match-fixing.

“We just sit there and pretend like we’re watching the match. But actually we’re taking bets,” the runner, who does not want to be identified, tells AFP at a quiet, undisclosed location.

For him, big football events like Euro 2012 are lucrative enough to risk Singapore’s strict penalties of jail and the dreaded cane, which flays flesh from the buttocks, and leaves prisoners unable to sit down.

He says there are hundreds of illegal betting operations across Singapore, each employing several runners who persuade punters to place bets and then pay out winnings and chase up debts.

“Many (illegal bookmakers) fly by the night. So they open for a week, after that they close, take a break and then come back again,” he says. “Because it’s really illegal here — you get caught, it’s caning and jail.”

These are the small-time hustlers. But from them, the money trail does not travel far before it is funding match-fixing in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, South America and Europe — including Italy’s “Calcioscommesse” scandal —which has all been linked to Singapore. When Singapore’s Wilson Raj Perumal, a virtuoso fixer whose schemes extended to organizing, and then rigging, international friendlies, was arrested last year in Finland, it exposed a web which is still being untangled.

On the eve of Euro 2012, Lazio captain Stefano Mauri was arrested and defender Domenico Criscito was axed from Italy’s squad over “Calcioscommesse” (football betting), which has been tied to Perumal’s alleged boss in Singapore. Former Italy striker Giuseppe Signori was among those arrested last year. More arrests have been made in Hungary, where Perumal is now being held after his jail term for match-fixing in Finland.