Day by day it becomes more and more clear that the doping case in which Simona Halep (32 years old) was involved was the number 1 priority for the prosecution, represented by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA).
Simona Halep
The explanation is simple. And it can be confirmed by simply accessing the ITIA website. Here, in the decision section, dozens of tennis names appear against whom heavy sanctions were given. We are talking about life suspensions or exclusions from the sport for many years. The extremely serious allegations are mostly about doping or match-fixing. The media coverage of these cases? Nonexistent! Because a lot of them target anonymous ATP and WTA circuits. Realistically speaking, nobody cares about their fate. That's why this idea kept circulating, as if ITIA was looking for “the big fish“, in an attempt to prove that he has an intense activity and that he does not forgive anyone, regardless of name and status! This “big fish” turned out to be Simona Halep.
And the American lawyer of the Romanian, Howard Jacobs, let it be understood that things were like that, in a dialogue with Sports Illustrated. “I don't think I've ever had such a strange case as this. Watch the prosecution fight fiercely to the end and cling to the blood doping charge. Which was never well built. The case has become super complicated. I can't even imagine how much money they spent (no – those from ITIA). But if I had to make an estimate, I'd say at least $2 million! They had so many experts, lawyers and they fought over every detailJacobs said.
His statement above complements the one made for “Adevărul” by lawyer Cristian Cernodolea, who, in turn, had cases with ITIA. “I think ITIA has to justify, one way or another, the huge funding that it has, the significant costs that it has. Operationally, they have some very expensive lawyers that they use as prosecutors. It seems that this organization has turned into a modern inquisition and must somehow justify its existence by obtaining convictions“, the barrister of England and Wales told us.
Based on the statements given by Jacobs and Cernodolea, the “Truth” of “digging” a little and found out “on sources“About how much did ITIA spend on the Halep case. Specifically, each lawyer employed by this forum was paid between £600 and £900. Hourly! And since at TAS, when judging the appeal, there were also days when the hearings lasted ten hours, we can imagine how much ITIA employees collected in this highly publicized file.
Howard Jacobs
Considering the huge resources that the International Tennis Integrity Agency has allocated to the fight with Halep, the Romanian's victory at TAS becomes even more important. Howard Jacobs also referred to exactly this aspect, in a dialogue with Sports Illustrated.
“Simona had the determination to fight from the very beginning and never took a step back. There were certainly some difficult moments. First, after the shock of testing positive for a substance she'd never heard of, never used, and didn't know how to explain. Then he found out about the tainted supplement. And that made Halep happy, because she thought she had found the solution to the problem. But ITIA came and said: <
