Tennis
Alex de Minaur questioned by an investigation
(Madrid) Australian tennis player Alex de Miñaur, 32and world, is among those implicated in a case of falsified health passports provided by an organization whose leaders are in France, Spanish police sources said on Thursday.
These sources “confirmed the name” of de Minaur to AFP, adding that other sportsmen and public figures were on the list of possible buyers of these fake health passports.
De Minaur took part in the Australian Open in January, where vaccination was compulsory, which notably led to world No.1 Novak Djokovic being excluded from the tournament and expelled from the country.
Spanish police this week completed the second phase of Operation Jenner, launched in January against the Spanish branch of an organization that provided falsified health passports and PCR tests through instant messaging apps, said Spanish law enforcement in a statement.
The investigation confirmed that the leaders of this organization were in France.
In total, eleven people were arrested for “forgery or use of forgery” and “2,200 people are targeted for having obtained their health passport fraudulently”.
This network was charging 50 euros ($72) for the fake PCR test. To obtain a fake health passport, customers had two options: either pay “about 200 euros” ($290) and simply obtain the “fraudulent document”, or, for customers with “higher purchasing power” , “pay 1000 euros ($1450) and be registered on the list of individuals with a complete vaccination schedule”.
According to the Spanish police, to access this database, the network would have convinced a person working in the medical sector and the investigation also targets a possible theft of access codes to this list.
Payments were made by cryptocurrencies “via accounts opened in third countries”.
Once the payout was received, customers got a QR code that showed a fake full vaccination schedule. “They could then obtain the health passport within two days, in which they were registered as having received two or three doses of vaccine”, detailed the Spanish police.
The police operation is still ongoing and the last phase will focus on “the arrest of the main members of the organization”.
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Sophia Jhon is a sports journalist and author. He has worked as a news editor for Sportish and is now a sport columnist for the same publication. Alberta’s professional interests lie largely in sports news, with an emphasis on English football. He has also written articles on other sporting topics.