Tuesday 9 February 2016 16:15, UK
Two tennis umpires have been banned and four more suspended while investigations are undertaken by the sport's integrity unit.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) confirmed on Tuesday that Kazakhstan's Kirill Parfenov and Denis Pitner from Croatia were banned last year, with a recent change in their code of conduct allowing for them to be named in public.
Parfenov and Pitner had earlier been named as the banned umpires by The Guardian in a report criticising the sport's governing body for failing to report the bans, although the ITF revealed their code of conduct change had only been instituted in December.
The statement read: "The ITF has sanctioned two officials under the ITF Code of Conduct for Officials. Previously the ITF Code of Conduct for Officials did not allow public dissemination of officials sanctioned. However the ITF amended the Code in December 2015 to ensure public reporting of officiating sanctions from 2016 onwards.
"Kirill Parfenov of Kazakhstan was decertified for life in February 2015 for contacting another official on Facebook in an attempt to manipulate the scoring of matches.
"Separately, Denis Pitner of Croatia had his certification suspended on 1 August 2015 for 12 months for sending information on the physical well-being of a player to a coach during a tournament and regularly logging on to a betting account from which bets were placed on tennis matches.
"The decision to sanction both officials under the ITF Code of Conduct was taken following Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) investigations. This approach is being reviewed as part of the recently announced Independent Review of Integrity in Tennis that will be chaired by Adam Lewis QC.
"To ensure accuracy of reporting, four officials are currently suspended pending the completion of ongoing investigations by the TIU. In order to ensure no prejudice of any future hearing we cannot publicly disclose the nature or detail of those investigations. Should any official be found guilty of an offence, it will be announced publicly."
The bans are on top of the life ban handed to French official Morgan Lamri in 2014 after an investigation by the TIU.
