Tennis Integrity Unit suspends duo over match-fixing and betting claims
Suspended Belarusian umpire and Greek tennis tournament director issued with fines totalling $16,000
The Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) has fined and suspended two match officials over alleged match-fixing and betting offences.
Belarusian umpire Alexey Izotov was suspended for three years and fined $10,000 for failing to report a corrupt approach made by external parties and of soliciting other umpires involvement in a manipulation of tennis scoring scam.
The TIU said Izotov was approached in November 2019, while officiating as a chair umpire at International Tennis Federation (ITF) event in Minsk, Belarus.
Izotov was allegedly offered payment in return for delaying the inputting of scores to his scoring device, which would allow others to bet on matches.
In a separate case, Greek tennis tournament director Antonis Kalaitzakis was fined $6,000 and suspended from the game for 20 months for betting on tennis matches and failing to report knowledge of corruption to the TIU.
The TIU alleged Kalaitzakis used online betting accounts to place 127 bets on tennis matches between 2013 and 2016, in breach of laws prohibiting betting on tennis.
Kalaitzakis, a director for ITF events in Greece, was also found to have failed to report knowledge of corruption by a third party to the TIU.
Suspicious betting alerts on tennis matches continue to rise, with the International Betting Integrity Association recently reporting 31 alerts relating to matches in Q1 2020.
Integrity bodies have claimed that corruption at lower levels of the sport, combined with the lower prize money available, makes tennis an easy target for criminal groups.