ASIAN gambling syndicates made a killing by placing large bets on West Ham four hours before it became public knowledge that their opponents in last weekend’s critical Premiership game had fallen ill.

Bookmakers believe that even if a criminal gang did not sabotage the Spurs players’ food, there was a leak of vital information that gave the syndicates a head start.

Most of the money was waged on Asian betting exchanges, some as early as 8am when the Spurs’ management was still debating whether to ask for a postponement of the game. Up to 10 of their players had been ill during the night with suspected food poisoning.

The match went ahead and Spurs lost 2-1 at West Ham. The defeat meant they slipped to fifth place in the Premiership table and failed to win the final place in next year’s Champions League, worth £10m.

Bookmakers and betting exchanges in Britain noticed a similar surge in betting on West Ham when they opened on Sunday morning. Many switched their odds. Even so, bookmakers are believed to have lost several million pounds when West Ham won. The biggest losses were among illegal bookmakers in Malaysia who take single bets of hundreds of thousands of pounds, according to a lawyer for a British bookmaker.

Scotland Yard said it would launch an investigation if it received an official complaint about a leak of inside information. Sources among former police officers in Hong Kong said Malaysian syndicates in Penang or Kuala Lumpur, both dominated by Chinese, were the most likely suspects for any foul play. Football betting is illegal in Malaysia.

Tests are still being carried out at the Health Protection Agency (HPA) laboratories in Colindale, north London, on scraps of lasagne and other food collected by police officers from the Marriott hotel in Canary Wharf, east London, where the players were staying. The results are expected tomorrow and are likely to clear the hotel. The HPA now believes the players were hit by a virus.

The Spurs team dined at the hotel at 7.30pm on the Saturday night prior to their match against West Ham at 3pm on Sunday. At 5am on Sunday Martin Jol, the Tottenham manager, was awoken by one of the club’s doctors who told him several players had been violently ill.

By 8am staff in the hotel’s restaurant noticed that while some of the Spurs’ management had emerged for breakfast, many of the players were missing. The staff is largely Polish but there are a few Asian workers.

British bookmakers who opened for business at 10am checked internet sites and noticed that betting exchanges in the Far East had started to receive heavy bets on the game two hours earlier. The first public disclosure about the health of the Spurs team was not made until 12.14pm.

A lawyer working for a London bookmaker, who asked not to identified, said: “The big money on West Ham started just before 8am. Serious chunks of cash were being waged, enough to win £1m or more on a single bet. Millions will have been won in Asia.

“We think it is suspicious because at that time there had been no public announcement about the illness. We don’t know if it was a gambling syndicate trying to ring the game or inside information.”

Additional reporting: Michael Sheridan in Bangkok

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