An
Italian investigation is laying bare the efforts of a gambling
syndicate that tried to fix tennis matches around the world, including
at Wimbledon and the French Open. Documents seen by the BBC and Buzzfeed
News suggest the gamblers approached two leading Italian players - but
prosecutors say there is evidence they courted many others, including
two who have been in the world's top 20.
Roberto di Martino sits
back in his chair, his face creasing into a tight smile, pushing up his
thin wire-rimmed glasses. I have just asked if I can look inside some of
the dozens of manila folders of evidence about tennis match fixing
piled around his vast office, beneath a fresco-covered ceiling. He
shakes his head firmly, putting away the papers closest to me on his
desk.
In May, he will present his evidence in court against two
former Italian tennis players, Potito Starace and Daniele Bracciali, who
are accused of conspiring to fix matches with Italian gamblers.
It has taken a long time to get the case this far.
The
prosecutor from the northern Italian city of Cremona never set out to
investigate tennis. In 2011, when police raided the home of Manlio
Bruni, an accountant and gambler from Bologna, it was for involvement in
a football corruption scam. He was placed under house arrest and his
computers were seized.
But as investigators waded through the
thousands of Skype instant messages on Bruni's computer they realised he
was trying to corrupt tennis players. Working with Buzzfeed News and
the Italian newspaper, Il Sole 24 Ore, the BBC has obtained hundreds of
pages of the evidence Di Martino chose not to reveal.
Media captionA former top-50 player exchanges Skype messages with a gambler offering him a match-fixing deal
In July 2007 Bruni began chatting on Skype to Daniele
Bracciali, who had at one time been one of the world's top-50 players.
They had been introduced by a mutual contact, who said Bracciali might
be interested in fixing a match.
When Bruni decided to test him
out, Bracciali was in the US, playing in the Newport tournament. He said
it was "extremely important to win the first set, and if possible, to
go a break ahead in the second… would that be possible?... in this case I
can give you much more".
Bracciali
refused, so Bruni tried again. "OK, I could do 50 to begin with for
tomorrow but it is absolutely necessary that you win the first set." By
50 he meant 50,000 euros (£39,000). Bracciali said he didn't know his
opponent so it would be difficult to arrange to win the first set, and
he told Bruni: "90% of me says no... but if I change my mind I will let
you know."
Bruni finished by promising 60,000 euros (£46,000) if
Bracciali changed his mind. He said he couldn't do it, repeating that
"it would be easier" if he knew his opponent.
This was the start
of a relationship that would last for four years until Bruni's arrest in
2011. During this period, prosecutors say, the gambling syndicate Bruni
was a member of would try to corrupt countless other players in Italy
and abroad.
This wasn't the first time Bracciali had been tapped
up by match-fixers. Years earlier, his family and friends had gathered
in the bar of his tennis club, just outside the ancient walls of the
Tuscan town of Arezzo. They were there to watch Bracciali play in the
French Open, the local boy made good. Just hours before the match he
called his father to say he had been offered $50,000 (£35,000) to throw
the match. Also at the club was Paola Cesaroni, mother of another local
tennis star, Federico Luzzi. She recalls how Bracciali's father was
furious.
He told his son, "Don't do it, because tonight the whole
town of Arezzo, all the supporters of your club are in front of a TV
waiting for your match. So play, and win," Cesaroni says. This is
exactly what Bracciali did.
Bracciali says he rebuffed Bruni's
approaches too, and he denies any involvement in match-fixing. He told
the police that he played along and faked interest - though one source
close to the investigation says, "You might fake for a month but you
don't do it for four years."
Bruni later told prosecutors: "I
actually tried to corrupt him by offering him 50,000 euros if he won the
first set and lost the other two during the game." Although Bracciali
declined to fix this match, Bruni said that Bracciali "declared himself
available to contact the Italian tennis players he knew, to get them to
do what I asked, altering in whole or in part the result of the
matches".
Bracciali first tried his sometime doubles partner,
Potito Starace, who was then ranked number 31 in the world. According
to prosecutors, Starace agreed to work with Bracciali and Bruni from the
end of 2007. Prosecutors claim Bracciali communicated with the gamblers
while Starace carried out the fixes on court.
In December 2007 Bruni informed other gamblers in
his syndicate: "We bought Potito." Starace was promised between 30,000
and 50,000 euros (£23,000 to £39,000) for each match he agreed to fix.
Bruni told prosecutors he even provided Sim cards so the players could
speak to him without being detected. Prosecutors claim this went on
until 2011. Potito Starace strenuously denies any contact with gamblers
or involvement in match-fixing.
In the computers seized by the
police, the gamblers discussed about 30 matches, including at Wimbledon
and the French Open. But there are two matches in particular, according
to chief Cremona prosecutor Roberto di Martino, "for which we have very
concrete indications that they have been manipulated".
Find out more
Listen to Simon Cox's report for File on 4 at 20:00 on Tuesday on BBC Radio 4, or catch up later on the BBC iPlayer
The
first of these matches took place in May 2009. Manlio Bruni told police
he had offered Starace 50,000 euros to lose against the lower-ranked
German, Daniel Brands. The gamblers used several accounts to place bets
that Starace would lose, but the betting company, Betfair, thought the
betting looked suspect and refused to pay out their winnings when
Starace lost. Bruni told the police the syndicate only made between
15,000 and 20,000 euros (£12,000 - £15,000) from the match but they
decided to give this to Starace anyway and delivered it to him in cash
at a tournament in Italy. There is no suggestion that Brands was aware
that anything might be amiss.
Bruni checked with another gambler
on Skype: "Did he like the cash?" The gambler replied he still hadn't
seen it but added: "Braccio [Bracciali] told me that he was very happy."
The second match took place in April 2011. Starace
was taking on the Spaniard, Daniel Gimeno-Traver, in Barcelona and was
offered 25,000 euros (£19,000) to lose, but double that if he won the
first set and went on to lose the match. Starace withdrew and forfeited
the match after winning the first set. He denies fixing this match or
any other game.
A week before this match Starace had reached an
ATP final in Casablanca. It was a big deal for him, a singles final.
Bruni received a call about the game from a fellow gambler. He said
Starace had taken 300,000 euros (£232,000) to lose. "I remained
astonished," Bruni told the police. "Starace had always said that he
would have been able to lose a first or second round but never a final."
After receiving the call Bruni checked with Bracciali
who said the idea Starace would throw a final was nonsense. In the end
Starace did lose. Bruni told prosecutors: "When I saw the result, the
world fell apart."
Sources close to the investigation suspect that
Starace was trying to work with a bigger, richer gambling syndicate.
This part of the files was leaked to an Italian newspaper and Starace
was furious when he read it. When he was interviewed by investigators in
October 2014 he stated, "I emphatically deny any arrangement to lose a
match in a tournament."
While the prosecutor was investigating
Bruni's links with Bracciali and Starace, the Italian Tennis Federation
used some of this evidence in 2015 to ban the two players for life for
match-fixing.
Starace's ban was later overturned and Bracciali's reduced
to a year because the appeal panel said the evidence wasn't strong
enough. The Cremona prosecutor had already reached this conclusion and
decided to base his case on different matches. The players face another
possible hit, though, as the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) - the sport's
own anti-corruption body - has also been running an investigation into
the players since 2014. So far no action has been against them
internationally.
But arguably the TIU should be using the Italian
investigation to look into other players linked to gamblers, not just
Bracciali and Starace.
As the Cremona prosecutor Roberto Di
Martino ploughed through the thousands of documents, he realised this
was not solely an Italian problem.
He noticed the names of top foreign players being
discussed by the gamblers and scams they were proposing. As a tennis fan
their names leaped out at him. Some of these players featured in an
earlier BBC/Buzzfeed News investigation which revealed the world tennis authorities failed to act on repeated warnings about 16 top-level players taking part in suspicious matches.
In
one conversation in February 2011 a discussion takes place about two
players who have been in the world's top 20, who the gamblers call their
"horses". One gambler says he has a conflict of interest as "one of my
horses is in the final" and his "other one is in the semi-final". He
goes on to claim he is friends with one of the players and "I have the
pass as member of his staff", before adding ominously, "slowly my horses
are coming to papa". A source close to the enquiry said referring to
"horses" could refer to players who brought gamblers luck or
alternatively that the players were under their control.
Roberto
Di Martino refuses to name any of these non-Italian players, but says
there is enough evidence in his files for investigators to question
them, at the very least to find out if they were approached by gamblers.
He
has limited ability to do this, so has handed all of his files to the
TIU. But when they visited him three months ago they were only
interested in the Italian players. He found this surprising and
alarming.
"The international events seem more problematic than
those situations in which, after all, only a few Italian players were
involved," he says. This was not a case of "one single situation in
which shadows were cast on important tennis players. The problem is that
there are many situations, then it cannot be an accident, it cannot be a
coincidence."
Nigel Willerton, director of integrity at the TIU
said it "acts on all evidence of corruption". In January, following the
BBC's revelations, an independent review panel was set up to look into
match-fixing. Mr Willerton said: "This wide-ranging remit will allow it
to investigate all and any allegations of corrupt practice."
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