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AFP
Madrid
Spanish police have dismantled a gang that allegedly fixed professional tennis matches, detaining 15 people and probing 68 others including players, one of whom competed in last year’s US Open, they said on Thursday.
In a statement, the Civil Guard police force said the organisation bribed tennis players to fix matches in ITF Futures and Challenger tournaments, the lower levels of the professional game where younger players start out before reaching the ATP and WTA Tours. The Civil Guard added the operation kicked off after the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU), an anti-corruption tennis body, made an official complaint.
It did not identify those detained or being probed but said one of them played in the last US Open. It is unclear whether the player is among the arrested or investigated.
Reports in Spain claimed the Spanish player Marc Fornell-Mestres, ranked 236th in 2007, was one of the leaders of the organisation.
Fornell-Mestres was handed a provisional suspension from the sport at the end of last year following an investigation into what the TIU described as “alleged breaches of the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program.”
According to the EU police agency, Europol, “the suspects bribed professional players to guarantee pre-determined results and used the identities of thousands of citizens to bet on the pre-arranged game.”
The members of the organisation are Armenian. “Some of them” were arrested, a Civil Guard spokeswoman told AFP.
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11/01/2019
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