COLOMBO, May 7: Sri Lankan police have reopened an investigation into the controversial election of the island’s richest sporting body, the cricket board, officials said Tuesday.

The 1999 election for the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (BCCSL) was marred by unprecedented violence and allegations of corruption with President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s security unit implicated in attacks against some office-bearers.

Police said Tuesday that Kumaratunga’s top bodyguard, Nihal Karunaratne, admitted in a statement that the president had ordered him to send armed units to the venue of the cricket board election.

Kumaratunga’s uncle, Clifford Ratwatte, lost to the incumbent at the time, Thilanga Sumathipala, but Kumaratunga’s government overruled the elections and appointed an interim board.

That management too ran into trouble amid allegations of financial irregularities and since then there have been no elections to the cricket board.

With Kumaratunga’s party losing parliamentary elections in December, the authorities have reopened the 1999 case where the president’s security men were accused of causing trouble at the cricket board.

Sri Lanka’s cricket board is seen as the richest sporting body in the island, collecting large sums for television and sponsor rights after Sri Lanka won the World Cup in 1996.—AFP