Ombudsman asks PCB to share inquiry reports on match fixers

ISLAMABAD: In a major decision on right to information, the federal ombudsman has directed the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to share details of inquiries conducted against the players involved in match-fixing and betting since 1996.

The decision was announced on the complaint of a civil society activist Zahid Abdullah, who had alleged failure of the PCB to provide the information sought under the Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002.

After failing to get certified copies of the inquiry reports conducted by the PCB against the players involved in betting from January 1, 1996, to December 31,2015, Zahid sought intervention of the federal ombudsman for redressal of his grievance.

A notice was issued by the ombudsman to the PCB on June 23rd to appear for a hearing on 27th June 2016. The agency (PCB) via its letter dated  June 24, 2016, argued that the request for such information was an attempt to malign and harass the PCB.  The PCB letter also argued that provision of the information will bring a bad name to Pakistan Cricket Internationally. It was also stated that such information is kept guarded by the International Cricket Council (ICC). The PCB lawyer Taffazul Haider Rizvi also argued that “provision of such protected information will result in embarrassment to some individual and maligning their reputation and it will also result in information which ICC keeps guarded.”

“It is apprehended that if such information is so provided, the same will result in maligning and so-called public trial of person named therein. It will, therefore, serve no good to provide information to the complainant who wishes to acquire it for the vague purpose of ‘research and advocacy,’” the PCB letter said.

Hearing was held on  June 27 and the PCB’s Manager Headquarters Muhammad Waqas Malik represented the agency. He reiterated the stance taken in the PCB letter. According to written decision of the obmbudsman, the PCB representative was told that “the stance taken by the board is strange logic where PCB is concerned about embarrassment of those individual who, by their misdeed, embarrassed the country and the nation.”

The agency’s representative was asked to furnish, in writing, that the ICC has prohibited release of such inquiry reports and on what ground as Pakistan is a sovereign country and its law prevails in such cases.

“More than two weeks have elapsed since the hearing, and the assurance given by the representative of the agency, no letter of notification from the ICC on the subject has since been provided by the agency,” the decision reads.

“From the contents of the complaint, response of the agency as well as the argument put forth during the hearing, it is evident that the information sought is in public interest and is not of a sensitive or secret nature affecting national security or foreign relations. The same may be provided to the complainant within two weeks of the issuance of these finding or reasons for not doing so be intimated in the terms of Article 11(2) of President’s order number 1 of 1983,” the decision of the ombudsman says.