Danish badminton player Persson banned over match-fixing

Published Mar. 21, 2019 6:57 a.m. ET

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Former top-10 player Joachim Persson of Denmark was banned for 18 months by the Badminton World Federation on Thursday in regard to match-fixing.

Persson was found guilty by an ethics panel of failing in a timely fashion to disclose approaches to fix two of his matches, and not cooperating fully with an investigation.

The BWF was tipped off in late 2016 that Persson, who rose to a career-best world ranking of 6 more than a decade ago, was betting on badminton matches. He admitted to betting on matches for about 13 years to 2016 but followed BWF rules.

He was found guilty of failing immediately to report an approach in 2015 to lose the first set to an opponent but still win the match, and for failing to report an approach by another opponent to manipulate their match. Persson failed to identify him to investigators, and investigators said there was no evidence any match was manipulated.

The 35-year-old Persson also failed to provide full banking records from 2013-17.

He was also ordered to pay costs of $4,500.