Better Late Than Never For the ITF

(ATR) The International Tennis Federation tells Around the Rings that two umpires have been banned for corruption offenses while four others are currently suspended pending investigations.

The ITF, in a joint statement with the Tennis Integrity Board, revealed on Tuesday that Kirill Parfenov of Kazakhstan was found guilty of "contacting another official on Facebook in an attempt to manipulate the scoring of matches" and was banned for life in February 2015.

The second umpire, Denis Pitner of Croatia, was suspended for 12 months from Aug. 1, 2015. His offense was "sending information on the physical well-being of a player to a coach during a tournament and regularly logging on to a betting account from which bets were placed on tennis matches."

Both banned umpires worked on the ITF’s Futures Tour and were found guilty after investigations by the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU).

What’s raising more than a few eyebrows is that the ITF never made public any information about the bans until confirming the sanctions in response to a story by The Guardian newspaper on Tuesday.

The ITF tells ATR the secrecy was due to the fact that both men had been sanctioned under the ITF Code of Conduct for Officials, which did not allow for public dissemination of sanctioned officials. The federation says it amended the Code in December 2015 to allow public reporting of officiating sanctions beginning in 2016.

The press release drew a distinction between these cases and the Nov. 2014 ban of official Morgan Lamri. Lamri was sanctioned under the Tennis Anti-Corruption Programme (TACP) which allows for public disclosure.

The ITF says that if any of the four officials currently under suspension are found guilty after their current TIU investigations are completed, there will be a public announcement. However, the ITF is refusing to release any information on the ongoing investigatons citing a need to "ensure no prejudice of any future hearing."

The bans, coupled with the lack of transparency surrounding them, can only be seen as ammunition for those who worry not only about corruption in tennis but also whether the ITF is the right organization to lead the battle against it.

Written by Gerard Farek

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