Former world No 1 Yevgeny Kafelnikov: 'Was I being investigated? Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn't'

The IRP report said there was a player who was under investigation and who retired in 2003. Adam Lewis QC, the report’s author, suggested in his press conference that the player might have agreed to retire in return for the investigation being dropped.

Lewis – who promised to return to the issue in his final report – said: “It involved a player who was under investigation for an integrity offence. The investigation did not lead to a decision that he had committed a breach of the rules.

“Richard Ings [the former ATP head of anti-corruption] in his evidence to the panel said that he, as the person responsible for making that conclusion, had concluded that there was not enough evidence in order to reach a conclusion that there had been a breach.

“However, we had seen a memorandum that reported on a hearsay basis that in the past somebody had been told that players had been asked in the past to retire rather than go through this sort of process.”

ATP figures show that 78 players retired in 2003. The Daily Telegraph tracked down several, and asked whether they could shed any light on the case. Few went into detail but one who did agree to speak was Yevgeny Kafelnikov, who won the French Open in 1996, the Australian Open in 1999 and Olympics gold at Sydney in 2000 before retiring in 2003 at the age of 29.

The Russian – once ranked No 1 in the world – is one of only 10 men to have beaten Roger Federer at Wimbledon.

Asked who the player concerned might have been, Kafelnikov said: “I have no idea who it was.”

At the same time, he made it clear that his own retirement was for “other reasons”.

He went on to become a professional poker player.

When asked whether he was under investigation by the Tennis Integrity Unit in 2003, Kafelnikov said: “Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. You have to ask the people who were in charge. I don’t remember.”

When pressed on his lack of recall, Kafelnikov said: “It was 15 years ago. I have no inclination to talk about the past. I don’t know anything about this report. You will have to get that information out of them. I have nothing to say any more.”