Searching for Sanjeev: Hansie Cronje's fixer

At first glance the cul-de-sac just off the Finchley Road in north London is calm, cosseted by the bosom of suburbia. The bins have been neatly arranged for the morning’s collection. Mock Tudor homes are blemished by satellite dishes. Ready-to-roar 4x4s shimmer out front. The odd net curtain twitches. At No 4, the gate has been left open. In haste or a sign that the owner will return?

“Yes, they’re still there,” says the woman at No 6 with a hint of American drawl.

“The Chawlas?”

“Yes...haven’t seen them for a few weeks, though. Perhaps they’re on holiday.”

Before she opened the door a perturbed, wide-eye had appeared behind the glass. Her voice wavered in the way that they do when strangers call. She is right to be nervous, although not for the right reasons. She is living next door to one of India’s most wanted. A man on an Interpol hunted list. A man Delhi police believe was the brains behind the match-fixing scandal that tore cricket asunder. His name is Sanjeev Chawla. Hansie Cronje’s fixer.

Chawla is an international man of mystery, a ghost. Delhi police have wanted him ever since Cronje’s shame broke news and hearts in April 2000. More than 13 long years ago. They thought they had their man once, when he was in possession of Scotland Yard, but he was released. They are about to try again.

In July, Chawla and Cronje, who died in a plane crash in June 2002, were named in a 70-page chargesheet by Delhi police for “fixing matches played between India and South Africa from February 16, 2000 to March 20, 2000 in India". Despite the passage of time, it is understood the failure to bring to justice two men for committing the heinous crime of disrespecting a game adored by billions, is a wound that will not heal.  A sore which has weeped more since the Indian Premier League fixing investigation.

“This is criminal conspiracy,” said Ravindra Yadav, additional commissioner of police. “People went to watch the games thinking they would be played in the true spirit. They did not know the outcome was fixed. That's why we have filed the charges." Yadav wants Chawla extradited. “We are almost sure he’s in London.” Good luck finding him.

Night after night Chawla’s bolthole in London’s jewish quarter is quiet. The lights are off and no one is ever at home. The telephone rings unanswered. The buzzer of the intercom – a clue to Chawla’s nervousness about unwanted visitors - echoes eerily in the void beyond. He is rumoured to have hideouts all over the country and, when the Cronje furore reached its zenith, he used to sleep in his car to avoid reporters.

Once, he answered my call. With his guard uncharacteristically lowered, he confirmed he was Chawla. But when asked whether we could talk cricket, he garbled “ugotwrongnumba’ and hung up. Chawla is wary. Possibly he has told friends, associates and employees to be the same. “Sanjeev?” they will bluster. “Don’t know him, sorry”.

Not much is known about the man who brought cricket to its knees. His family were from Pakistan. The Chawlas moved to Jangpura, a neighbourhood in south Delhi,  in 1953 and ran a clothing business which within ten years  had fixed assets worth £800,000. Chawla was born in April 1967. In 1993 he left for London to run an import-expert clothes outlet, under the auspices of Commercial Clothing Limited, in Oxford Street. He lived in a flat in Hendon, drove a rickety BMW and sometimes borrowed money from staff.

Rajesh Kalra, who according to police was “arguably the biggest cricket betting operator in Delhi with worldwide links”, appeared to back a belief that Chawla was more interested in gambling on cricket than his clothes shop. He told a news agency in 2000: “[Sanjeev] is a deep water fish. He has been around for a while in the world of cricket betting.”

Kalra was to prove a key cog in the wheel of illegal fortune. He met Chawla in London in September 1999 and plans were hatched to fix matches to the tune of £1.5 million. Manmohan Khattar and Sunil Dara, two Delhi bookmakers, were added to the gang. Towards the end of the year more meetings were held in Delhi and Mumbai. Kalra, Khattar and Dara have each been named in the chargesheet.

A former cop who worked on the investigation said that it was the job of Khattar and Dara to ensure the bets were placed. “Chawla wasn’t working alone,” he said. “They were placing the bets in the Indian market after receiving the information from Chawla. He was a very intelligent man. A great charmer, good looking. He was a very organised man.”

Evidently. Chawla was able to make friends with Cronje through a connection with Hamid Cassim, who hailed from Johannesburg and claimed to be close to members of the South African team. Clive Lloyd, the manager of the West Indies, claimed to have seen Chawla in a VIP box during the team’s tour to South Africa in 1998-99.

Cronje told the King Commission - the enquiry in South Africa during which a nation’s hero was revealed a villain – how he first met Chawla. He knew him as ‘Sanjay’ and was introduced by Cassim in a Durban hotel during the triangular one-day series involving England and Zimbabwe in early 2000. “They said I could make a lot of money if we would lose a match,” Cronje said. In a written confession, he revealed Chawla gave him $10-15,000.  Chawla has denied ever meeting Cronje. The charge sheet boasts evidence from a cleaner at a hotel in Mumbai who saw Cronje "going inside Chawla's room empty-handed and coming out with a bag".

When Delhi police released the now infamous Cronje tapes, recorded during the Pepsi one-day series in in India in March 2000, Chawla was the voice police believed was at the other end of the line. The game was up.

Chawla: Is [Pieter] Strydom playing?
Cronje: Yes he is playing. Yeah.
Chawla: [Nicky] Boje?
Cronje: Boje is playing.
Chawla: And who is playing? [Herschelle] Gibbs?
Cronje: Gibbs and myself.
Chawla: Yeah, what about anybody else?
Cronje: No, I won’t be able to get any more.
Chawla: You won’t be able to get more?
Cronje: No.
Chawla: Ok, just tell me. But you have only four with you and not anybody else?
Cronje: No.
Chawla: [Lance] Klusener and no one?
Cronje: No, no, impossible, impossible. They were saying that they were already doing Cochin. The other guys are already angry with me because I have not received their money you know.
Chawla: But I told you I have already given him altogether 60.
Cronje: Ok.
Chawla: And tomorrow I can deposit the money in your account, it is not a problem because of the time difference. Tomorrow itself I can deposit the money.
Cronje: Ok. Everything is fine. Spoken to Gibbs and to [Henry] Williams and Strydom. Everything is fine.

On the basis of such evidence Cronje was banned for life in October 2000 by the King Commission. Gibbs and Williams were banned for six months, Boje and Strydom, who under oath both denied ever having been involved in fixing, were exonerated. Chawla was safe in London.

“How much money did he make?” wondered the Delhi police source. “Hard to say. Very difficult to say how much any bookie would make from fixing because there were many layers to this kind of corruption. But it would have been, I presume, several crore.” One crore roughly equates to £120,000. The chargesheet claims more than twice that amount was handed over by Chawla to Cronje.

That the world listened in to the conversation between Cronje and Chawla appears to be the fault of Kalra, the much-vaunted gambling expert. It was his mobile phone that Chawla had given to Cronje. The same phone police were monitoring because two Mumbai businessmen had complained they were being threatened by extortion.

It is that suggestion of menace at play in a twisted, tawdry tale which has added to the intrigue surrounding Chawla. Match-fixing and the mafia have been bedfellows since the 1980s. The underworld is not shy of extortion, either. It is an unfair link, however, as police do not believe Chawla was a gangster. He was too “sophisticated”.

What does Rajesh Kalra think? Kalra is easier to find than Chawla, although he is only marginally more willing to talk. Over a crackling cellphone line from Ghana, where he was on business, Kalra was irked to be asked about his involvement in the Cronje affair and the charges by police. He spat back answers.

“I never met Cronje. You know Sanjeev? He’s the one who knows everything. I never met Hansie Cronje.

“But Delhi police have named you?”

“I don’t know about that. They haven’t given me notice of that. They have to prove it in the court. I haven’t see the papers.”

“I want to talk to Sanjeev.”

 “Go and see him. He’s a good man, a through gentleman. He’s a good person. He’s a good looker. Very suave. Take some women with you and you’ll be fine. A good sense of humour.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Never, never, never. Whatever has happened has happened, no bullshit with him. He’s the last person on earth to be associated with that. I know that.”

After Cronje, Chawla went back to work in the clothing business. He also owned a restaurant on the Commercial Road in Whitechapel. It closed after a fire. He has held nine directorships in companies since 1996. Commercial Clothing Limited was dissolved in 2004 with liabilities of £21,000.

Today he is listed as a director of Aksu, another clothing company. Its registered address is in Kennington, south London. One of his business partners is Kasim Akkus, a renowned restaurateur in London since 1975. Akkus runs ISK Catering, a company which Chawla was director of from May to June this year.

At his restaurant on Great Portland Street Akkus greets customers with a smile and thumbs up. Including me. On a weekday lunchtime I eat chicken kiev and rice. He takes a seat in front of me, still wearing his chef’s shirt, to meet with a friend over a plate of salad. They talk quickly, pausing occasionally to glance at the television showing a Turkish soap opera.

Before leaving I thank him for my meal and ask Akkus about the scores of signed photographs of celebrities which adorn the walls. One is of John Sergeant, the veteran journalist more famous for his clumsy performances on Strictly Come Dancing. “He came here a lot,” says Akkus after I tell him Sergeant knew my father.

There is another photo which caught my eye. It hangs outside the lavatories. It is of Javed Miandad playing a cover drive. The former Pakistan batsman’s son is married to the daughter of Dawood Ibrahim, the notorious gangster who used to have a vice-like hold on the illegal Indian betting markets. “I know all the cricketers, Pakistani peoples,” says Akkus.

But does he know Sanjeev? “Sanjeev?...No, I don’t know him”. Surprised, I remind him of the names of Akus directors. His face lights up and he laughs. “Ah! Sanjeev! Indian guy. He’s my shareholder. I think he’s a good guy. I’m not friends with him. In ISK [ISK Catering] the S is for Sanjeev. I am the K, for Kasim. 

He’s a charming man. He know many people.”

Does he know that Delhi police want to extradite him? “I don’t know. I meet him five or six times. I don’t know him very well. If you leave your name and number I will give him a message.”

That evening I am once again outside Chawla’s home in that safe, serene, tree-lined street in north London. A light is on upstairs. It goes out as I buzz. No answer. I walk to a nearby coffee shop, composing a text message to Chawla, telling him I will try again in 15 minutes. When I go back the lights are still off. Later that night, Chawla replies: “I request you to please not call again as this is invasion of my privacy and causing emotional distress to me and my family. I don’t want to speak to anyone regarding anything, kindly respect this.”

“You will have to talk sometime,” I tell him. 

This article was first published in The Cricketer December 2013