Tennis star banned for 24 years after fixing six matches and corrupting other players
Stefan Milicevic has been banned for 24 years and fined £52,808 ($70,000) by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) after being found to have fixed six matches and recruited fellow professionals “as part of a corrupt network”. The Serbian player was also found by an investigation to have tried to fix another six matches between 2022 and 2024, but attempts to recruit others led to several more players fixing matches. Milicevic, who reached a career-high world singles ranking of 1338 while still a teenager in August 2014, is suspended from playing in, coaching at, or attending any events organised or sanctioned by World Tennis, WTA, ATP, the Grand Slams or any national association until 8 October 2050. The 29-year-old did not co-operate or even engage with an investigation this year, according to the ITIA, despite the organisation detailing that it made seven separate attempts to obtain a response through multiple channels, with a notice of major offense issued on 24 September also said to have gone unanswered.
Milicevic’s failure to co-operate with the investigation did not contribute to the length of their ban, an ITIA spokesperson said. Instead, it reflected the severity of the match-fixing offences, which significantly breached tennis’ anti-corruption rules, as well as the attempts to recruit other players, with initiating or leading others to commit offenses falling under a high level of culpability in the ITIA Sanctioning Guidelines.
Marino Jakic, his playing partner at an ITF World Tennis Tour tournament in the Croatian city of Osijek in August 2023, has been provisionally suspended by the ITIA since 24 June while it conducts a full investigation into potential breaches of tennis’ anti-corruption rules in 2023. He appealed its imposition in July, but independent anti-corruption hearing officer (AHO) Amani Khalifa upheld it in August “on the grounds that it was ‘supported by substantial evidence.
Failing to respond to his charges meant Milicevic’s case did not proceed before an AHO. As such, there is no written hearing decision; the player received a “deemed sanction” instead.
Milicevic played 11 professional matches between 2022 and 2024, according to World Tennis records, all on the ITF Tour. He played tennis as a student at the University of Minnesota and was also a coach at DePaul University in Chicago.
His 24 years of ineligibility are four more than Quentin Folliot, whom the ITIA described last December as a “central figure in a network of players operating on behalf of a match-fixing syndicate” after breaching the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program (TACP) 27 times between 2022 and 2024. Khalifa described the French player, who denied all 30 offences he was charged with, as “a vector for a wider criminal syndicate, actively recruiting other players and attempting to embed corruption more deeply into the professional tours.
