By Shazia Hasan

KARACHI, Aug 12: The Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) has no intention of entertaining Pakistan Cricket Board's (PCB) “unreasonable” demand of returning a hefty sum of money given to the federation back in the year 2000.

The payment dispute between the PHF and PCB recently came up through an official of the cricket Board who revealed that PCB's former chairman had given an amount of Rs10 million to the PHF's former president when the federation had run into financial difficulties while preparing to send the national hockey team to participate in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Terming it as a “loan” the PCB is now demanding a refund of the amount from the PHF who, while calling it a “grant”, have said nothing doing. Dawn

Sources within the PHF told on Thursday: “The PCB have no legal or moral grounds to be making demands on the PHF to return the said amount.

“The PHF has also taken legal opinion on the issue and it is an open-and-shut case as the sum given to the PHF was a grant and not a loan,” the source added.

“Besides, there has been no correspondence regarding the matter from the PCB in these last 10 years. Even if we suppose for a moment that it was a loan, then I must inform the board that even banks carry out correspondence in the form of reminders about the money lent to a party. Failing to do so for three years results in the loan's getting written off. And we are talking about a lapse of 10 whole years before they said anything. How unreasonable is that?”

Elaborating further on the issue, the source said: “The money had come to the PHF as part of an arrangement between two army generals — Lt Gen Mohammad Aziz Khan, the federation president at the time, and Lt Gen Tauqir Zia, the then PCB chairman — and not as a PHF and PCB deal. We also know that Lt Gen Tauqir Zia at the time wanted the PCB to offer annual grants to the PHF which couldn't happen. Still, it was all water under the bridge until the PCB brought up the matter due to pressure from the Public Accounts Committee.”

The PHF has seen three changes at the helm since 2000 as Lt Gen Mohammad Aziz Khan was followed by Tariq Kirmani, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali and the current President Qasim Zia. Meanwhile, on the PCB front Lt Gen Tauqir Zia was followed by Shaharyar Mohammad Khan and Dr Nasim Ashraf before Ijaz Butt arrived on the scene in October 2008.