London: Serbian tennis player David Savic has received a life ban for attempting to fix matches.
The Tennis Integrity Unit says the 659th-ranked Savic was also fined $100,000 after being found guilty of three violations of the sport's international anti-corruption programme. The ban begins immediately.
He's the second player to get a lifetime ban. In May, Austrian player Daniel Koellerer was the first to be banned for match-fixing.
The 26-year-old Savic was found guilty of the same three violations of the sport's anti-corruption rules as Koellerer, including "contriving or attempting to contrive the outcome of an event."
Savic reached a career-best 363rd in the rankings in 2009 and never played above the challenger circuit.
The anti-corruption hearing was held on September 12 in London and details will not be made public, the TIU said.
Koellerer, a former Davis Cup player who once ranked 55th, is fighting his ban that resulted from violations between October 2009 and July 2010.
The TIU has been set up on behalf of the International Tennis Federation and the ATP and WTA Tours.
Five Italians were among lower-ranked players sanctioned by the ATP in recent years for betting on matches - receiving suspensions ranging from six weeks to nine months between 2007-08. French player Mathieu Montcourt also was banned for two months in 2008.
Russian player Nikolay Davydenko was cleared in 2008 of any wrongdoing following an investigation by the ATP into suspicious betting patterns surrounding his match against 87th-ranked Martin Vassallo Arguello the previous year.
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