Snooker star slapped with 12-year ban missed 2025 World Championship after suspension ended
The 2025 World Snooker Championship featured most of the game's top players, but there was one controversial star who did not appear at the Crucible off the back of his 12-year ban
The snooker world will never forget the humongous ban that disgraced match-fixer Stephen Lee was handed in 2012. Just over a decade ago, the former World No. 5 was slapped with a whopping 12-year ban after being found guilty of match-fixing.
He was punished for seven counts of fixing matches which took place between 2008 and 2009. The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) described it as "the worst case of corruption". Lee's suspension was the longest handed out to any snooker player until the match-fixing scandal of 2023, when Li Hang and Liang Wenbo were banned for life.
Unlike the Chinese duo, Lee's ban is now over, and – if he wanted to – he would have been free to attempt to qualify for this year's World Snooker Championship.
If the 50-year-old decided he has unfinished business at the Crucible, he would have had to settle the enormous fine he was handed by the WPBSA. As well as his hefty ban, he was also ordered to part with £40,000 in costs, which would rise up to £125,000 as a result of an unsuccessful appeal he made.
Should the fines be paid, he would be free to try and qualify through Q Tour, the WSF Championship or Q School to qualify for next season's World Snooker Tour. Outlining what he would need to do, the WPBSA told the Mirror: "Stephen Lee would need to reach a satisfactory agreement with the WPBSA over the settlement of his outstanding costs before he could return to compete at WPBSA/WST events.'
Meanwhile, a previous interview Lee gave to the Mirror suggests that he does not have the appetite to compete again. In 2022, he said: "I must get asked this weekly, daily, minutely.
"I would like to say no, but I am still capable of playing. Let's see what happens in two years. It's not a no, and not a yes.
"We can only just see what happens in a couple of years' time. I have some exciting things coming up, and I'm also getting older.
"My eyes are getting worse, and I never had good eyes to start with. As you get older the determination and the fire goes.'
Not long after the interview, Lee was seen replying to a Facebook user, who asked if he would want to return to the sport. Lee said: "Not a chance of it my friend. I struggle to break off nowadays. It's down to my son now…'
At the time of his punishment, Lee insisted he was "totally innocent" and was completely "devastated" when the punishment was handed to him. It was ruled by the tribunal that he intentionally lost to Ken Doherty and Marco Fu at the 2008 Malta Cup and also deliberately lost the first frame in matches against Stephen Hendry and Mark King, all the way back in 2008 at the UK Championship.
A 2012 statement from Tribunal Chairman Adam Lewis said: "I concluded that Mr Lee did not strike me as a cynical cheat, but rather as a weak man who under financial pressure, succumbed to the temptation to take improper steps that he may well have justified to himself as not really wrong, because the ultimate result of the match, win or lose, was the same.
"These breaches occurred when Mr Lee was in a financially perilous state not entirely of his own making and was finding it difficult to obtain entry to enough tournaments. As a weak man in a vulnerable position, he succumbed to temptation. I consider it unlikely that he was the prime mover or instigator of the activity. It seems to me likely that advantage was taken of him."
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