Further cobwebs started to emerge out of the tennis world after two tennis officials were secretly banned on charges of match-fixing on Tuesday. An investigation done by The Guardian reveals that officials from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Turkey allegedly took bribes for manipulating scores at the International Tennis Federation(ITF)’s Future Tour.
“Umpires from Kazakhstan, Turkey and Ukraine are among those alleged to have taken bribes from betting syndicates in exchange for manipulating live scores on the International Tennis Federation’s Futures Tour – which allowed crooked gamblers to place bets already knowing the outcome of the next point.,” the report says.
“The Guardian has also learned that Kirill Parfenov , an umpire from Kazakhstan, was decertified for life in February 2015 for contacting another official on Facebook in an attempt to manipulate the scoring of matches.
"Yet the tennis authorities never publicly released details, alerting only a small number of tournament directors and national tennis federations,” the reports further adds.
It also criticises the ITF of remaining mum over the case of a Croatian referee Denis Pitner who was suspended for a year for continuously logging on to a betting account from where bets could be placed on matches.
“The International Tennis Federation also kept quiet over the case of another umpire, Denis Pitner of Croatia, who was suspended for 12 months at the start of August 2015 for regularly logging on to a betting account from which bets were placed on tennis matches."
There are claims that certain officials delayed updating the score by around one minute, that gave the gamblers the time to place the bets knowing the result of the point.
With regards where the gambling occurred, it has been said that the tournaments that were held in eastern Europe, which generally have little TV coverage.
During the course of the Australian Open, Nick Lindahl had come out in the open and pleaded guilty to fixing smaller matches in 2013.
