KARACHI: Pakistani hockey legends Samiullah Khan, Manzoor Hussain Junior and Hanif Khan have praised the government’s decision to carry out forensic audit of Pakistan Hockey Federation accounts.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, the three former captains expressed hope that the on-going audit will fully expose the major financial bungling committed by the current PHF regime and the culprits would be duly punished.

They added that such an audit should have been carried out much earlier after members of the PHF congress and executive board themselves repeatedly came out in the media with solid evidence including cheque numbers of dubious payments made by the federation’s top brass.

Reportedly, the embezzlement of funds runs into hundreds of millions of rupees but no accountability of the PHF officials was done up till now.

It is pertinent to mention that during the last few years, the PHF was the biggest benefactor of the government’s financial grants among all the sports bodies in the country and despite that, Pakistan continued to lose a majority of international tournaments and fared very poorly in world rankings.

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2019