Sickness in snooker will be brutally removed, pledges sport's supremo

World Snooker have launched an investigation into Sunday newspaper allegations that World Champion Higgins, along with his manager Pat Mooney, agreed to lose specified frames in future tournaments in return for 261,000.

Higgins was immediately suspended while Mooney has resigned from the board of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. But WPBSA chairman Mr Hearn insists there is no evidence of any match-fixing at the Betfred.com World Championship – which reached a final climax last night between Neil Robertson and Graeme Dott, also managed by Mooney – as the scandal cast a dark shadow over the game.

"People will speculate, but so far we have had no instances whatsover of any unusual betting patterns during this event," he said.

Three-time world champion Higgins, a surprise loser to 52-year-old Steve Davis in the second round at the Crucible, has vowed to clear himself of the frame-fixing allegations, which he vehemently denies.

Mr Hearn, however, is adamant he will clean the game up, with David Douglas, a former Scotland Yard chief superintendent, leading the investigation into the Higgins allegations.

"If there is a sickness in snooker, it will be the death knell of snooker if it is not removed," he said. "But the sickness will be brutally removed because we will not tolerate it. If proven guilty, the penalties will be very harsh indeed."

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