"It has happened to me, I won’t say where or under what circumstances," Clement said.

“There was not a fraction of a second’s hesitation (to refuse the proposal),” he said. The 2001 Australian Open finalist feared revealing more about the offer could lead to reprisals agai-nst him. “That’s why I don’t want to say too much about it. And it’s for that reason that I won’t mention either the place or how it happened,” Clement said.

Clement thinks lower-ranked players struggling to make an impact may be under more pressure to accept such offers. “The problem is for a player slightly lower in classification (ranking) or in a certain amount of financial difficulty,” he said. “Even if he refuses, this can play on his mind during the match. It can upset him. That’s not the case for me. To accept something like that is to betray the sport.”

Clement’s confession followed the result of an investigation by online betting exchange Betfair into suspicious betting patterns on a match at last week’s ATP St Petersburg Open. Betfair voided bets on a match in August for the same reason but found nothing wrong with Dmitry Tursunov’s win over Boris Pashanski last week.