Reports said low profolic tournaments like ITF Futures circuit and ATP Challenger Tours were targeted by the criminals.
Five Armenians have been charged in Belgium with corruption, money laundering and other crimes as part of a major international investigation into match-fixing in tennis, according to the Belgian federal prosecutors. A total of 21 properties were searched in Belgium and 13 people were detained on Tuesday. There were simultaneous raids launched in the US, Germany, France, Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Netherlands, who cooperated with their Belgian counterparts.
An investigating judge in Belgium issued an arrest warrant for five people, "all of Armenian nationality," the federal prosecutor's office said.
They were charged with corruption, money laundering, forgery and membership of a criminal organisation. The judge ordered the release of the eight other people following questioning," the office added.
The judge will decide soon whether those held with fixing charges will be arrested officially or not.
The raids were part of an international probe into an Armenian-Belgian criminal network suspected of bribing players to throw games. According to reports, the Belgian-Armenian ring has been bribing players since 2014 and the criminals have been winning bets on the fixed results.
Belgian prosecutors said that the tournaments like the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Futures circuit and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Challenger tour. which are mostly away from the limelight of the television coverage, were targeted for fixing. The meager prize money in those tournaments apparently left players susceptible to backhanders coupled with the rise of online betting.
There are approximately 15,000 professional tennis players but only the top 250 women and the top 350 men even manage to bear comfortably the coaching costs.
An Independent Review Panel (IRP) earlier had looked into integrity of professional tennis and according to their report in April, the governing bodies of professional tennis - the ATP, WTA, ITF and Grand Slam Board - said they recognised "vulnerabilities" in the sport, particularly at lower levels.
PTI inputs
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 "Five Armenians charged over tennis match-fixing in Belgium")
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