By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Monday, May 20, 2024
 
Chair umpire Armando Belardi's repeated match fixing violations have cost him his career. 

The Venesuelan chair umpire has been banned from tennis for life and fine $75,000 after being found guilty of 26 violations of the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program.

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Belardi's ban is effective May 7th, 2024, which was the date of the decision.

As a result of the lifetime ban, Belardi cannot officiate or attend any tennis event event "authorized or sanctioned by the members of the ITIA (ATP, ITF, WTA, Tennis Australia, Fédération Française de Tennis, Wimbledon and USTA) or any national association," the International Tennis Integrity Agency announced today.

Belardi, who previously served a 30-month suspension for failure to co-operate with an investigation, did not respond to the ITIA’s charges. By failing to response to the ITIA charges "Belardi effectively admitted liability for all charges and acceded to sanctions," the ITIA said.

The chair umpire was found to have guilty of successfully "contriving, soliciting, facilitation of various professional tennis matches in 2019 and 2021."

BeIardi was so committed to the match-fixing cause, at one tournament in Peru where a player Belardi recruited to fix points in a match forget which points to fix, Belardi enlisted an aide court-side to send signals to the player on which points to fix.

Photo credit: Mark Peterson/Corleve