The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) confirmed on Tuesday that Dominican tennis player Maikel Villalona, 21, has been sanctioned with a four-and-a-half-year ban for multiple violations of the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program (TACP).<\/p>\n
Villalona, who is not listed in the world rankings, was charged on October 15 with committing five breaches of the anti-corruption code, including match manipulation, receiving money, and failing to report a corrupt approach, in connection with a doubles match on the ITF World Tennis Tour played in 2022, the ITIA said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was also found responsible for failing to cooperate with an ITIA investigation after ignoring five separate requests to be interviewed in early 2025.<\/p>\n
By not responding to the charges brought by the body responsible for pursuing improper conduct related to match corruption, Villalona \u201cadmitted liability on all charges and accepted the sanction,\u201d which consists of a four-year-and-six-month suspension and a fine of $10,000 (approximately \u20ac8,500).<\/p>\n
Villalona chose not to appeal the penalty, which took effect on October 30 and prohibits him from playing, training, or attending any tennis event organized by ITIA members.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This sanction follows a 12-year ban imposed on Chinese player Pang Renlong for fixing\u2014or attempting to fix\u2014more than 20 matches between May and September last year. Pang, 25, was also ordered to pay a $110,000 fine, although $70,000 of that amount was suspended.<\/p>\n
A week earlier, the tennis anti-corruption agency announced an even harsher sanction\u2014a 20-year ban\u2014against French player Quentin Folliot, the sixth player convicted as part of a large-scale investigation into an organization involved in match-fixing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) confirmed on Tuesday that Dominican tennis player Maikel Villalona, 21, has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-371149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}