London: In a press release sent today, the premier Lawn Tennis Association (International Tennis Federation; ITF) announced sanctioning life ban to Serkan Aslan and Mehmet Ulker (both Turkish). Both the officials were stripped of their officiating certifications after being found guilty of violating the Code of Conduct for Officials.
In the investigations done to find out truth of the charges made against the two officials, the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) and hence the ITF Disciplinary Panel found Mr Aslan and Mr Ulker guilty of breaching Articles A10, A13 and B1 of the 2015 Code of Conduct for Officials.
As per details of the case, as per evidence:
- It was found that Ulker used his mobile phone to communicate the scores of matches over which he was officiating to a third party at the ITF Futures event in Belek, Turkey in October 2015;
- It was found that Ulker delayed the inputting of scores into his PDA device to allow one or more third parties to benefit by placing bets on matches in which he was officiating at the ITF Futures event in Belek, Turkey;
- It was found that Aslan and Ulker delayed the inputting of scores and/or fraudulently manipulated scores by inputting fictitious deuce games into their PDA device while officiating at other ITF Futures events between January and September 2015;
- It was found that Ulker counselled or procured another official and/or officials to participate in the fraudulent manipulation of the ‘livescoring’ system on or around January 2015 including, but not limited to, Mr Aslan;
- It was found that Aslan and Ulker failed to comply with the TIU’s requests to surrender their mobile phone;
- It was found that Aslan and Ulker failed to report to the Joint Certification Programme the unlawful conduct of officials whom they knew to be fraudulently manipulating the ‘livescoring’ system.
Under these charges, the ITF Disciplinary Panel imposed a life ban on Mr Aslan and Mr Ulker with immediate effect, which means that they will not be able to officiate at events organised or sanctioned by the ITF, ATP and WTA, or at Grand Slam tournaments. In addition, these two officials will also be included on the non-accreditation list circulated to sports stakeholders as per the standard punishment under these scenarios of code violations.
The ITF designated Code of Conduct for Officials applies to all Certified Officials working at ITF, ATP, WTA and Grand Slam events. These frame the disciplinary obligations of the officials working for the International Tennis federation or any of its organization.