Online gambling company bwin said Monday it has taken the organizers of the French Open to court for slander in a legal counterattack after Roland Garros sued to ban Internet betting at the Grand Slam tournament.

In February, the tournament organizers filed complaints in Belgium and Paris claiming that computer betting companies stain the reputation of the clay-court championship. "Following claims by the French tennis federation that services offered by online sports betting operators present a danger to the ethics of sport," bwin is suing the organizers of the French Open for damages before a Paris court, bwin said in a statement issued Monday.

A Belgian court in Liege heard arguments in the case last Friday and is expected to rule before the French Open starts on May 25. The issue of integrity in tennis came to the fore last year when an online betting site - Betfair - voided all wagers on a match in Poland between fourth-ranked Nikolay Davydenko and 87th-ranked Martin Vassallo Arguello because of irregular betting patterns.

The French federation is suing bwin, Betfair and Ladbrokes - with a court injunction to stop them from taking bets on the French Open. It seeks a fine of 50,000 euros (C$80,869) a day for any violations. Bwin spokesman Antoine Costanzo said in an interview that the head of the French tennis federation made slanderous comments when he launched the court case and wants 1 million euros (C$1.62 million) in damages. The bwin group says it is the world's leading provider of online gaming entertainment.

Countering French Open organizers, the European Gaming and Betting Association said that the Internet is an excellent tool to trace any irregularities in betting operations. It said it left "a perfect audit trail, one that can, where appropriate, be shared with regulators and other authorities in order to trace bets and hence provide valuable evidence in the fight against fraud."

French Open organizers said that betting companies are tainting the reputation of the tournament and unfairly using it as a way of making money. They argued that if a match-fixing scandal hit the French Open, it would undermine the value of the tournament, which in 2007 had revenue of 118 million euros (C$191 million) and attracted 450,000 fans to Roland Garros.

Source:http://www.gamblingplanet.org/