Tennis rocked by match-fixing claims

Evidence of suspected match-fixing in tennis has been revealed on the morning of the Australian Open getting underway in Melbourne.

Secret files passed on by a group of anonymous whistleblowers to the BBC and BuzzFeed News reportedly show widespread suspected match-fixing at tennis' top level including matches at Wimbledon.

The names of the players haven't been revealed but the group includes Grand Slam winners, 16 former or current top 50 players and eight players who are set to compete at the Australian Open starting Monday.

All players have been flagged to the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) - set-up in 2008 to police the sport – over suspicions of throwing matches, but were allowed to continue playing.

Since 2008, the TIU were repeatedly alerted to a third of the players over suspicions of match-fixing but no disciplinary action was ever taken.

The documents revealed that in 2007, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) investigated a match between Nikolay Davydenko and Martin Vassallo Arguello for suspicious betting activity.

Both players were cleared by the investigation which lead to a wider enquiry into betting syndicates in Russia, Northern Italy and Sicily.

Betting analyst Mark Phillips, who worked on the 2007 investigation, told the BBC there was a core group of players believed to be at the heart of the scandal.

"There was a core of about 10 players that we believed were the most common perpetrators that were at the root of the problem."

"The evidence was really strong, there appeared to be a really good chance to nip it in the bud and get a strong deterrent out there to root out the main bad apples."

Last year more than 50 matches were flagged to the TIU by the European Sports Security Association for being suspicious.

Documents passed to the BBC and BuzzFeed News showed betting organisations, professional gamblers and other sports integrity units had warned the TIU about players who had been involved in suspicious matches since 2003.

The TIU says on its website it has a zero-tolerance policy to gambling-related corruption worldwide.

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