Federer denies gambling accusation
On October 13th, celebrity gossip website TMZ.com published a report which alleged that a lawsuit had been filed against IMG, Swiss player Roger Federer’s management company; TMZ also claimed that players such as Roger himself and Tiger Woods
have been named in the lawsuit, filed by Agate Printing. The website itself provides information saying that Agate Printing’s case claims that IMG’s owner Ted Forstmann had placed bets in World Number 2 professional tennis player Roger Federer’s favour, with
the player’s help at his 2007 French Open match, using the information to quadruple his bet.
The website claims, verbatim, “Tennis star Roger Federer gave Forstmann (IMG’s owner) inside information about a tennis match in which Federer competed. The suit claims on one case Forstmann raised his bet from $10,000 to $40,000 after receiving the inside
info from Federer. We’re told the match in question was the 2006 French Open final. Ironically, Federer lost to Rafael Nadal.”
Jim Agate, owner of the printing company suing IMG also filed phone records with the court handling the case. Agate claims that these records will prove that Ted Forstmann was in contact with Agate on the eve of the 2007 French Open final. Agate claims that
he called a Costa Rican betting service immediately.
TMZ.com received a response from Michael Sitrick, Ted Forstmann’s representative. Sitrick refuted the claims, telling the website, “The allegations in James Agate’s complaint are beyond false, they are preposterous.” He also added that Agate had filed such
a suit once before in 2008, and that case had been dropped and dismissed as well. IMG also plan to contest the lawsuit and counter-file a case: an internal memo says, “We intend to hand over all of the relevant information to the appropriate criminal authorities
and to ask them to prosecute this individual [Agate] to the fullest extent of the law.”
Now, Roger Federer, who lost to Andy Murray at the Shanghai final yesterday, himself issued a statement, denying all allegations about providing information regarding his matches to his management company’s president. He challenged these claims at a press
conference in China, where he had been for the 2010 Shanghai Masters Event. He vehemently denied all accusations, rejecting them as a “100% not true”.
When asked how he felt about the accusations, Roger Federer replied saying, “If it were a different player, I would hope that it’s obviously not true, but because it involves my name, somewhere out there, I know it’s 100% not true. So I’m pretty relaxed
about this because I’m hoping complete honesty for the sport, leave the game better off [inaudible] when I play when I arrive to the sport even though it was already a great type of form I had, and the last thing I would do is harm the sport and create a negative
light on our sport.”
However, the player also seems injured by the allegations; during the same interview, he also said, “It’s disappointing that someone’s throwing my name around, I would never do such a thing, the fans know that and the people who know me know that, so I have
nothing to hide and I’m sorry for those who think there’s something to this story.”
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