The tennis world trembles. While the first Grand Slam tournament of the year opens this Saturday in Melbourne, the BBC and Buzzfeed reveal the existence of a vast system encounters arranged on the professional circuit. To do this, the two media were based on an investigation report from 2008 and the analysis performed on 26 000 paris games.
How did it work the system?
The tennis players were approached at their hotels and were sure to lose in a specific scenario. An amount ranging from 45 000 to 90 000 euros was paid. Once the agreement, bettors groups settled in Russia, north of Sicily and Italy were informed. They then took advantage of these pipes. To maximize earnings, players were often encouraged to lose when they were favorites, scammers then enjoyed the best ribs.
If the complicity of one player is enough, some bettors established in northern Italy were more cautious. “The way these accounts have acted around the suspects matches suggests that the two players concerned were involved in the plot,” said Mark Philipps a former investigator on the ATP website Buzzfeed.
Who are the players involved?
At least 70 players are suspected of having taken part in this system. Of these, 16 are part of the Top 50 and some have already won Grand Slam tournaments. Three suspects matches were moreover held at Wimbledon and Roland Garros.
If the identity of the majority of tennis players suspected is currently unknown, and already we know already that the Russian Nikolay Davydenko and Argentine Martin Vassallo Arguello in might be worried.
Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko, French Open May 26, 2014.
afp.com/ Kenzo Tribouillard
In addition, the margins of the Australian Open, Novak Djokovic has reiterated he was approached in 2007 to lose a game at the St. Petersburg tournament . “I was approached indirectly through people who worked with me at the time. Obviously, we immediately said no. The person who was trying to contact me is not even came to me, “said the world number 1.
When was the fraud?
The first suspicions of match fixing in the tennis world back in 2007. At the time, Russian Nikolay Davydenko, number 4 of the ranking ATP Argentine Martin Vassallo meets Argüello, during the Sopot tournament in Poland.
Betfair, a British online paris platform is then alerted. The amounts attracted by this game are abnormally high. In all, about 4.7 million are wagered on this meeting, more than 10 times the average for this kind of tournament. Moreover, the majority of this money is wagered on the defeat of the Russian Yet archi favorite. The abandonment of the latter at the beginning of the third set because of a persistent foot pain ends arousing suspicion. Faced with suspicions of arrangement, Betfair canceled all paris.
Following these events, a team of experienced investigators from the middle of horse races is made urgent by ATP. During long months, they will gather indications that the Sopot episode is far from isolated. In all, 72 suspects are games which are discovered and networks in Italy and Russia that will be updated.
Why ATP is singled out?
A year after the Sopot match, a new structure in charge of ethics, Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) is unveiled by ATP and a new code of conduct is adopted. The same day, Nikolay Davydenko and are laundered Martin Vassallo Argüello. Sopot team of investigators are invited to present the findings of their research. “We’ve given them five large binders containing all the evidence we had. (…) We gave everything they wrapped with a pretty pink ribbon, and they did nothing,” said Mark Phillips at Buzzfeed.
In addition to being accused of match fixing hedged in 2008, the world body of tennis is suspected of having taken no action to fight against the phenomenon. She has even continued to stifle suspicions of this kind. The European Sports Security Association (Essa), an association of alerts issued by agencies paris, says he regularly communicated his doubts about the TIU 15 players. Betfair, the gaming platform by which all began in 2011 has delivered the names of 20 tennis players who have been the subject of many biased paris. Of these, five were already mentioned in the records kept by the Sopot team. The director of the TIU defended himself with the BBC ensuring that it was not “the role of paris platforms to judge potential illegal acts”.
From Melbourne, the president of the ATP Chris Kermode here alongside the Serb Novak Djokovic in November 2015, denied any attempt retraction Monday. “Our approach is zero tolerance to all forms of corruption,” he said.
AFP
The bookmakers are not the only ones arrested instances of world tennis. The police also communicated to internal names of tennis authorities. In 2013, a former player prosecuted for illegal paris delivered the wet name 28 players in the match-fixing case. Six of them had already been cited either by Betfair in 2011, by investigators of Sopot. Police forwarded the list to the office of ATP Wimbledon. In the end, only one player from the bottom of the list received a disciplinary sanction. He is accused of refusing to cooperate with the TIU in a case that has not been specified.
In 2015, the Italian court decided to continue two men for rigging matches. Suspended for life initially on appeal their penalties was canceled for one and reduced to one year to another. Both tennismans still awaiting judgment.
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