LAHORE, Sept 6: The former Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) treasurer Mohammad Naeem has alleged that the chairman of the board Shaharyar M Khan had played havoc with the mandate given to him by the president of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf.
Replying to a question in the Meet-the-Press programme organised by the Sports Journalists Association Lahore (SJAL), on Sunday, Naeem, said that the president Musharraf assigned the chairman the job to maintain transparency in the board, specially in the matters relating to the finance.
But, he added, the PCB chairman had obliged his friends giving them jobs without advertising the posts in newspapers. He said that the board had failed to inform the nation about the budget statements of the Pak-India series held early this year and the delay occurred because there were hurdles in reconciling the accounts of tickets.
Naeem claimed that the matter of tickets could not be solved out because the PCB chairman and the then chief executive Ramiz Hasan Raja had taken under their control the tickets amounting to Rs 16 million and from which the account department had no record of Rs 7 million.
"The chairman has a false claim of completing the reconciliation of the tickets and he (Shaharyar) will announce it on TV. "Let them announce it then I will disclose the names of those who were obliged through tickets", he said.
Naeem, who tendered resignation after levelling different allegations of financial and administrative nature, said that currently the board was being run by an acting chairman Abbas Zaidi, but added, no such post existed in the PCB constitution.
He alleged that Abbas was inducted in the PCB without following the rules and regulations besides the official had not received any appointment letter from the board.
When asked Abbas and marketing consultant Riaz Mahmood were two consultants and according to the PCB's version such posts did not need to follow the pattern set for the regular appointments, he said that there was a set procedure for hiring the services of each and every official which was not followed in the cases of the consultants.
He said that the PCB was giving Rs 100,000 for every month to its marketing director Zahid Bashir, who had been sacked by Shaharyar but regained the job through a court's order.
The PCB, he said, instead of making Zahid work was giving him lakhs of rupees for doing nothing and opted to hire the services of marketing consultant and thus put a double burden on the exchequer.
Naeem negated the allegation that as the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) treasurer he tried to get 200 visas for UAE when the office of the Asian body was set up there in 2001. "As a treasurer he has no authority to bag any visa from the UAE as it was the job of the high ups to deal such matters", he said.
Naeem also dispelled the impression that he opted for resignation after the chairman had refused to recommend his name as member for the ACC finance committee. "I had worked as the ACC treasurer therefore the post for an ordinary member of a committee does not have importance for me and further more I resigned on May 13, 2004 while the ACC meeting to decide the members was to be held on June 28 and there was no agenda issued at that stage from which I should have learnt about the vacancy," he argued.