LAHORE: In a clear case of conflict of interest and what can easily be termed as violation of PCB Constitution, as many as twenty staff members of the Pakistan Cricket Board have been registered as general body members of the Northern Cricket Association (NCA) — the only one registered out of the six associations — with the Registrar Societies and Joint Stock Companies, Islamabad, in nearly one year.

According to the list of general body members listed in NCA and obtained by Dawn, Chief Operating Officer PCB Salman Naseer and Chief Executive PCB Wasim Gulzar Khan have been registered as president and vice president of the association respectively.

Moreover, Saad Imran, another PCB employee is registered as secretary. Besides these three, 17 other members of the general body are all staffers of the PCB including Zakir Khan (Director International Cricket), Sami Burney (Director Media), Ateeque Rasheed (acting Chief Financial Officer), Asad Mustafa (Senior General Manager Logistics), Adnan Muzaffar (Manager International), Imran Ahmad Khan (Head of Players Acquisition and Management), Mohammad Salman Mesud (Senior Manager Marketing), Mansoor Ali Khan (Assistant Manager Marketing), Ahsan Iftikhar (Manager Media Domestic), Muhammad Waqas Malik (Manager Human Resource ), Bilal Hanif (Manager Accounts), Adeel-ur-Rehman, Azhar Ali Hashmi (Manager Estate), Saad Munir (Assistant Manager Domestic), Ashfaq Ahmed (Senior General Manager Human Resource), Syed Shoaib Naveed (PSL Project Executive) and Junaid Zia (General Manager Domestic Cricket).

As if this is not eye opening, another list of seven-member office bearers of the NCA is shown to include Salman Naseer as president, Wasim Khan (vice president), Saad Imran (Secretary), Zakir Khan (Chief Executive Officer), Ateeque Rasheed (chief financial officer), Bilal Hanif (Internal Auditor) and Sami Burney (member).

Holding positions in the NCA by any PCB employee is a violation of Cricket Association’s Constitution as clause 12.1-e binds the members of the Cricket Association not to be an employee of the PCB. Moreover, the 12.1-b clause states that every office-bearer of the Cricket Association must be the permanent resident of the respective Cricket Association. But hardly any one among the 20-member list is the permanent resident of the NCA’s jurisdiction which covers the cities namely Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Chakwal, Jhelum, Attock, Gilgit-Baltistan and AJK.

This clause, however, exempts any nomination from the sponsor and from the PCB. The nomination by the PCB, out of the Board, can be included because clause 12.1-b clearly disallowed the employees of the PCB to be a member of the Cricket Association.

Board’s Constitution violated in a clear case of conflict of interest

The move may result in serious consequences and belies PCB’s claims of maintaining transparency in its affairs because as PCB’s CEO Wasim Khan and as PCB’s COO Salman Naseer both have control over releasing funds and grants to anyone. But in this case of NCA violations, on both ends these two top PCB officials will be dealing with the affairs, i.e they will be releasing the funds or grants from one end and will be receiving the same on the other end.

As the Annual meeting of the NCA was also held on December 31, 2019 in Islamabad presided over by Salman Naseer, the expenses on that meeting were made either by the NCA or by the PCB. So, in effect, both Wasim and Salman were responsible for those expenses while sitting at both ends of the offices.

It is also noted that all the office bearers of the NCA donot mention the positions they are holding in the PCB.

When contacted, a PCB spokesman said: “There is no bar on PCB employees acting as founding members to register cricket associations as societies.

The Model Constitution for Cricket Associations are yet to be adopted by the Northern Cricket Association. Till such time that it is adopted; there can be no violation of it.

“PCB must register Cricket Associations, put in place interim arrangements, conduct elections and thereafter elected person will become office bearers.”

It may be mentioned that under the new PCB’s constitution, implemented on August 19, 2019, the PCB has to register all six cricket associations under the new system with Registrar Societies and Joint Stock Companies. But in nearly one year’s time only one association has been registered.

It is also surprising that under the Registrar Societies’ constitution clause 20, no word about the registration of sports bodies is mentioned. The clause says: “To what Societies Act applies: Societies established for the promotion of science, literature or the fine arts, for instruction, the diffusion of useful knowledge, (the diffusion of political education), the foundation or maintenance of libraries or reading rooms for general use among the members or open to the public, or public museums and galleries of painting and other works of art, history, mechanical and philosophical inventions, instruments or designs.”

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2020