A MAN has been arrested by the Policia Nacional in Spain for being part of a Europe-wide gang that fixed tennis matches to benefit players and gamblers to the tune of €800,000.
House searches were carried out in the Guadalajara and Valladolid areas with evidence seized.
An operation coordinated by Eurojust with the participation of French, Bulgarian, Spanish and Romanian authorities resulted in 16 simultaneous arrests and the dismantling of the criminal organisation.
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The man arrested in Spain had a role of paying intermediaries who would then pass on money to tennis players.
Suspicions of match-fixing arose when higher-ranking players were defeated and lost key points during matches.
Comparing other matches and players, as well as reviewing alerts from international sportsbooks, revealed a connection between the matches.
Since most bets were based on the loss of a set or match by the players themselves, suspicions of match-fixing continued to grow.
Authorities discovered that some of the participants had created exclusive accounts for the specific tennis bets.
They also found that bets were placed simultaneously in different countries, which went against the grain of the way a match was apparently going.
Investigations led police to suspect that the criminal network paid several players of French nationality in the ATP Top 100 to deliberately lose a set or a match.
Financial transactions showed that the network operated mainly from Bulgaria with the help of intermediaries in other countries.
Investigators detected that from payments were made from Spain, Romania and Bulgaria to French intermediaries who sent the money to the French tennis players.
Authorities have currently identified profits worth around €800,000 as a result of match fixing.
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