Officials served with bans as suspensions issued while corruption charges probed

Kirill Parfenov, of Kazakhstan, was banned for life in February 2015, after making contact with another official on social media in a bid to manipulate match scoring.

Denis Pitner, of Croatia, was suspended for a year last August after passing on fitness details of a player to a coach and accessing a betting account from which tennis bets were placed.

The story, which was revealed by the Guardian, follows BBC and BuzzFeed allegations about match-fixing at the top level of the sport that overshadowed the start of the Australian Open last month.

Those reports led to the announcement of an independent review into tennis’s anti-corruption practices, which are overseen by the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU). The newly-reported offences are said to have taken place on the Futures Tour, the lowest rung of professional tennis.

Part of a joint statement from the TIU and ITF read: “In order to ensure no prejudice of any future hearing we cannot publicly disclose the nature or detail of those investigations (into the four officials currently suspended). Should any official be found guilty of an offence, it will be announced publicly.”