New claims about potential match fixing in tennis come to light

talian prosecutor investigating match fixing in tennis claims that two of the players being looked into have been ranked inside the world’s top 20 and the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) has been criticised for not heavily pursuing the issue.

According to prosecutor Roberto di Martino, more than two dozen non-Italian players have been mentioned by gamblers.

Italians Potito Starace and Daniele Bracciali have been arrested and charged and di Martino wants to see more players investigated by the TIU, who he claims have only been interested in investigating Italian players.

Di Martino told BBC’s File on 4 programme and BuzzFeed News: "Interestingly, they are not so-called second-tier tennis players, but also players of some importance.

“The international aspect seems more problematic than a situation involving a few Italian players.

“I do not understand why there was no real initiative by the integrity unit to establish if there was something dirty behind this.”

With regards to Starace, di Martino says he has “concrete evidence” relating to specific matches in Barcelona in 2009 and 2011.

BBC published a Skype conversation between Bracciali and gambler Manilo Bruni that took place in 2007, where Bracciali was offered “50 to begin with” to fix a match in Newport, USA, though Bracciali did not agree or fully disagree to go ahead with the plans.

Starace and Bracciali have been accused of accepting bribes of up to €50,000 to fix matches between 2007 and 2011, with the pair due to appear in court in May, though both deny the charges of conspiracy to commit sports fraud.

The Italian Tennis Federation banned the pair from tennis for life in August at the conclusion of its investigation, but Starace has since been cleared by the federation’s appeal court and Bracciali’s ban has been reduced to 12 months.

The claims from di Martino follow a separate investigation previously carried out by BBC and BuzzFeed News, who allege that tennis’ governing bodies have been warned on numerous occasions about potential fixing from 16 players that have at some point been ranked in the top 50, without singling out the ATP or WTA tours.

That investigation also identified 15 players as having lost heavy-betting matches often and four of those players lost almost all of these matches.

Nigel Willerton, director of the TIU, and Chris Kermode, executive chairman of the ATP, were both questioned by MPs as part of a parliamentary inquiry into the issue in February, where the TIU was described by MP Damien Collins as a “fig-leaf” for tennis’ governing bodies.

ESSA, a body which represents sports-betting operators, reported that tennis was responsible for 73 out of 100 suspicious-betting alerts last year, scoring almost four times higher than second-placed football with 19 alerts.