Spanish tennis player Fernando Bogajo Fernandez has received a ban of one year and ten months after admitting to match-fixing offences dating back to 2018.
The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) confirmed that Fernandez has received a fine of $3,000 for the offences, with an additional $5,000 suspended on the basis that he commits no further breaches of the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program (TACP) rules.
The TACP Proposal for Disposition framework meant that Fernandez was sanctioned by the ITIA upon the admission of guilt, as opposed to after an official hearing.
Fernandez, who had the highest Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) ranking of 901, admitted to accepting money for not producing his “best efforts in a match” in 2018 and failing to report the approach.
Fernandez has been provisionally suspended since December 2019. As a result of this, he is allowed to resume playing tennis immediately.
Fernandez admitted to breaching three TACP rules, which all fall under section D. The first was purposefully not performing his best in the match, while the second was accepting money for underperforming.
The third breach was that he did not report being approached to fix the match.
These sanctions follow the ITIA’s decision to ban Kyrgyzstani tennis player Ksenia Palkina for 16 years after she admitted to a series of betting-related offences.
Both rulings comes after it was announced that Jonny Gray will step down as chief executive of the ITIA later this year.
