By Tennis Now | Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Italian doubles partners Daniele Bracciali and Potito Starace have been banned from the pro circuit for match-fixing at the 2011 Barcelona tournament.
Photo credit: Getty Images
It's game over for Italian doubles partners Daniele Bracciali and Potito Starace.
The pair have both been banned from the pro circuit for match-fixing at the 2011 Barcelona tournament.
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The 40-year-old Bracciali was banned for life and fined $250,000.
The 37-year-old Starace, who retired in 2015, was hit with a 10-year ban and fined $100,000.
The Tennis Integrity Unit announced the bans for both players, who partnered to reach the 2012 Roland Garros doubles semifinals, today after a disciplinary hearing in September.
Both Bracciali, who reached a career-high rank of No. 21 in 2012, and Starace, who peaked at No. 27 back in 2007, were found guilty of two breaches of anti-corruption rules.
The pair were found guilty of contriving to fix the outcome of matches and facilitating betting on matches.
Currently ranked No. 95 in doubles Bracciali played in an a Challenger-level doubles match two weeks ago, bowing in the round of 16 in Bratislava.
Today's bans come four years after Bracciali and Starace, who were both suspended for betting back in 2007, emerged at the center of a match-fixing scandal that rocked Italian tennis.
In 2014, the Italian media printed transcripts of Skype conversations that linked Starace and Bracciali to fixing matches in 2007 and 2011.
The conversations were uncovered during a probe into match fixing for football in Cremona, and there are conversations in which Bracciali discusses losing a match in Newport in 2007 to Scoville Jenkins, and another in which an owner of a betting parlor talks of an agreement he has arranged with Starace to fix the 2011 final in Casablanca against Pablo Andujar.
Investigators uncovered a call made in 2011 in which an owner of a betting parlor who was later arrested confirmed that he had an agreement with Starace to lose the 2011 Casablanca final against Pablo Andujar.
Starace lost 6-1, 6-2.
Both Starace and Bracciali were suspended for betting in 2007, but it was ruled then that neither had bet on their own matches and each had wagered relatively small amounts.