Najam Sethi serves legal notice to PCB

LAHORE: Former chairman of Pakistan Cricket Board Najam Sethi has sent a legal notice to PCB on the grounds of defamation.

In the legal notice issued by Sethi, it was stated that the details published on the PCB website in reference to the expenses and payments during his tenure, had been incorrect and were issued to dent his reputation.

“The website of the Pakistan Cricket Board (“PCB”) has been recently updated to include a chart (the “Chart”) titled “Chairman PCB Expenses & Benefits 2014-2018.” The table itself purports to itemize certain expenses and payments in relation to:

a. Mr Sethi for the period of 2014-2017 (as the Chairman of the Executive Committee);

b. Mr Shahryar Khan for the period 2016-2017 (as the Chairman of the PCB);

c. Mr Sethi for the period 2017 -2018 (and also Aug-Sep 2018) (as the Chairman of the PCB).”

Earlier, on October 27 2018, the website of the cricket board had issued details of the expenditures sustained when Sethi had been in charge of office.

According to the details provided by PCB the expenditure had totaled to over Rs71 million in his four years of occupancy as Chairman of the Executive Committee and PCB Chairman combined.

The legal notice termed the aforementioned details by PCB as “incorrect, misleading, grossly exaggerated and deliberately calculated to hurt Mr Sethi’s reputation and to lower the esteem in which he is held by the general public.”

The notice had gone on to mention that the former PCB Chief had never received the ‘PCB Allowance’ amounting to Rs14 million, that the document had claimed.

Furthermore, the claim of ‘Accommodation Allowance’ asserted by the PCB document to Ehsan Mani was also refuted by the legal notice.