LONDON - Jatuporn Na Lamphun has been banned from tennis for 18 months and fined after being found guilty of offences under the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program, the London-based Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) said Wednesday.
Jatuporn, 22, is unranked, but is considered an up-and-coming, possible tennis star.
He admitted to three offences of betting on tennis matches between July and November, 2014, and was found guilty of a further offence of failing to cooperate with the TIU investigation.
Jatuporn has never held a ranking and his £3,400 ($5,000, about 173,000 baht) fine is considerably greater than his reported career earnings of £476 (24,200 baht).
The initial ban imposed was six months but independent anti-corruption hearing officer Ian Mill, a senior English lawyer, extended the ban after finding Jatuporn guilty of a further charge of failing to cooperate with the TIU.
Jatuporn: Banned for six months. (Photo from Google-Plus)
In a TIU statement, Mill said that, "the full and timely cooperation by participants in TIU investigations is of paramount efforts being made by the TIU to eliminate corruption in professional tennis."
Last week the International Tennis Federation (ITF) announced that two umpires had been banned for corruption and four more were currently suspended while under investigation.
Kirill Parfenov of Kazakhstan was banned for life in February 2015 for contacting another official in a bid to "manipulate the scoring of matches", the ITF said in a joint statement with the TIU.
Tennis was also hit by allegations over elite-level match-fixing made by the BBC and BuzzFeed shortly before the start of the Australian Open last month.
After those allegations became public, tennis authorities announced an independent review into their fight against corruption.
In a joint statement, the ATP, the WTA, the ITF and heads of all four Grand Slam tournaments said the review was aimed at further strengthening the integrity of the game, while calling for governments worldwide to make fixing a criminal offence.
The priority of the review, headed by Adam Lewis - a leading expert on sports law who works out of the same London chambers as Mill - is to look at the structure of the TIU, including how to make it more transparent and better resourced.
It is expected that the review will take at least 12 months, with the publication of an interim report during that time.