June 13, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-us-Sani 08, 1429

KARACHI, June 12: Senior PCB official Salim Altaf, sacked on Thursday by the PCB, was involved in leakage of confidential, sensitive information for quite sometime and paid the penalty for the same, reliable sources in the PCB revealed.

“Salim was caught red-handed on Thursday after he was confronted by the PCB with tapes of several damaging telephonic conversations involving him and a few outsiders,” the sources said.

‘‘Apparently, the former Test pacer had been passing on some classified information to people outside the PCB in a bid to settle some old score,” said a former Test cricketer while speaking to Dawn on condition of anonymity. “There is enough proof that Salim was involved in such unethical activity and he was finally caught and dismissed by the chairman.”

Another top PCB official said the board was absolutely in its right to terminate Salim’s services because contracts issued by the board included clauses which clearly mentioned that no reason or cause whatsoever needs to be mentioned by the PCB for discontinuing the services of the officials. “Altaf’s services were no more required,” PCB’s Chief Operating Officer Shafqat Naghmi said.

It is believed that conversations Altaf has had with journalists and outsiders over a period of time were being recorded by the board. Transcripts of these conversations were read out to him this afternoon. He was then told that he had been leaking sensitive information to the press about the board and was given a choice to either resign or be sacked. Salim reportedly refused to resign and asked to be chargesheeted for the allegations. He was later escorted from the board headquarters in Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore, by security guards.