LONDON, Jan 8: Two former London policemen have been hired to lead the investigation into corruption in tennis, the sport’s governing bodies announced on Tuesday.

Jeffrey Rees and Ben Gunn will work with the sport’s governing bodies in an attempt to restore the credibility of the sport, badly hit by betting and match fixing scandals in 2007.

Rees established and still runs an anti-corruption unit for the International Cricket Council (ICC), while Gunn led a group examining integrity in the British horse racing industry.

In a joint statement, the four Grand Slam tournaments, the International Tennis Federation, Association of Tennis Professionals and WTA Tour announced that the pair would lead an “independent analysis of professional tennis’s integrity regulations and procedures and the nature of the current threat posed by gambling”.

“Integrity of competition is the essence of all sport. That is why we remain fully committed to meeting the global challenge posed by gambling face on”, Etienne de Villiers, Executive Chairman of the ATP, said.

“We have stringent procedures and sanctions in place to deal with any suspected corruption and have shown we will act decisively where our integrity rules are broken.

“By harnessing the scale and resources of the entire sport to create a Tennis Integrity Unit we will be taking a bold and significant step in ensuring the future integrity of our sport.

“We are delighted that in Jeff Rees and Ben Gunn we have retained two of the world’s leading sports integrity experts to help us realise that objective.”

Larry Scott, the CEO of the WTA Tour, said it was another important step in the effort to stamp out problems associated with gambling.

“Each of tennis’s governing bodies has already taken proactive measures to keep our sport clean, but this independent review will help us ensure we are protecting the integrity of professional tennis into the future,” he said.

The review, which will take place over the next two months, is designed to complement the procedures and sanctions already put in place by the sport.

Tennis was hit by a series of gambling scandals in 2007.

A match involving Nikolay Davydenko in Sopot, Poland, last July, is still under investigation over irregular betting patterns.

Several players have said they have been offered money — which they turned down — to lose a match.

Three Italian players, Potito Starace, Alessio Di Mauro and Daniele Bracciali, have all received bans for betting, albeit on other players’ matches.—Reuters