Serbia’s David Savic remains the second tennis player to receive a lifetime ban from tennis for match-fixing after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld his sentence set by the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU).
Savic, who reached a career-high No. 363 ranking in 2009, was banned in October last year but took his case to appeal at the sporting court in Lausanne. Although his guilt was confirmed, CAS ruled that the 27 year-old should not pay the $100,000 fine imposed by the TIU.
CAS said it annulled the fine because “it would be inappropriate to impose a financial penalty in addition to the lifetime ban as the sanction of permanent ineligibility provides for the deterrence that corruption offences call for.”
An official statement read: “CAS has confirmed the decision, to rule that David Savic be permanently ineligible to participate in any event organized or sanctioned by any tennis governing body.
“The CAS Panel rejected the player’s arguments and concluded that the disputed facts had been proven not only by a preponderance of the evidence but indeed to the panel’s comfortable satisfaction.”
So Savic, whose only appearance on the main ATP World Tour, came when he appeared as a wild card in the doubles main draw in the Serbian Open for three years from 2009 to 2011 has been rendered ‘permanently ineligible to participate in any event organized or sanctioned by any tennis governing body.’
The TIU’s assertion that Savic made invitations to another tennis player to fix the outcome” of matches, was upheld despite the player’s appeal to a three lawyer panel was based around his insistence he was made a scapegoat to become “a drastic example for other players.
Savic, whose career prize money totaled $US 86,727, denied all charges of match fixing and maintains a current unidentified top player reported him to the TIU that the Serb asked him to fix a match in exchange for money.
Austrian Daniel Koellerer was the first player to receive a lifetime ban after being found guilty of a similar violation in May last year.
Topics: banned from tennis, CAS tennis news, Daniel Koellerer, David Savic, match fixing, Serbian tennis news, Sports, Tennis News, TIU tennis news, US Open 2012