Will he say a little more than “I have nothing to say”? Grigor Sargsyan, alias “Maestro”, was found guilty last spring by the court of Oudenaarde (Belgium) of having participated in fixing tennis matches. The facts, which concern Futures and Challengers tournaments, occurred between February 2014 and June 2018 and involve 182 players, including the French Mick Lescure and the Belgian Arthur De Greef.
Considered the mastermind behind the initiative of a vast match-fixing enterprise, he was summoned again by the Belgian justice system this April 25 in Ghent. The international federation the ITF, and its anti-corruption offshoot, the TIU, the Tennis Integrity Unit appealed his first sentence, to five years, which he is serving in Brussels with temporary exit measures.
Six defendants retried on April 25
He will not be the only one to be called back to the stand. Six of the original twenty-eight defendants, mainly of Armenian nationality, will be retried on April 25. The charges are “corruption”, “money laundering”, “membership of a criminal organization” and “violation of Games legislation”.
The hearing in March, conducted in Dutch, left a great impression of frustration. The small hands, supposedly recruited by Grigor Sargsyan to bet discreet sums, as well as the seven players summoned, had chosen to remain discreet. This silence did not make it possible to outline the full ramifications of a network visibly ending in Armenia, without the debates having made it possible to identify and/or prosecute with certainty all the instigators, Sargsyan not necessarily appearing to be entirely at the top of the pyramid.
The very strenuous investigation nevertheless demonstrated that the tennis proletariat often had a financial interest in selling its matches, particularly doubles, rather than playing them. Dozens of administrative sanctions, suspensions of several months or years, have been taken by the sports authorities, in the light of this trial – the largest ever – or more generally internal investigations.
