LONDON — Samuel Bensoussan, the French tennis player, has seen his suspension for match-fixing extended to three years following an appeal, as announced by the International Tennis Integrity Agency on Wednesday.
Initially, Bensoussan received a ban of one year and 11 months for orchestrating the fixing of both singles and doubles matches in lower-tier competitions, linked to a criminal organization operating out of Belgium.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld the ban but magnified it to three years for the 34-year-old player, who reached his highest ATP singles ranking of No. 405 in June 2018.
The ITIA released the verdict from CAS, which revealed that “the investigations brought to light a criminal syndicate that corrupted at least 181 athletes globally and manipulated a minimum of 375 tennis matches.”
A criminal trial in Belgium resulted in a five-year prison sentence for the head of the syndicate.
In his appeal to CAS, Bensoussan sought to overturn his original ban, while the ITIA pushed for a lengthened suspension of six and a half years.
Ultimately, the trio of judges at CAS decided against requiring Bensoussan to refund the $1,150 that tennis investigators alleged he received for fixing a match back in 2018.
