ICC provisionally suspends Zimbabwe official Ikope

DUBAI: Zimbabwe Cricket director Enock Ikope has been provisionally suspended by the International Cricket Council (ICC) and charged with three counts of breaching the organisation’s anti-corruption code, the governing body said on Monday.

Ikope, chairman of the Harare Metropolitan Cricket Association (HMCA) since 2015, is the second official from HMCA’s board to be penalised by the ICC after Rajan Nayer was banned from all cricket activities for 20 years in March.

Nayer, who was the treasurer and marketing director of HMCA, accepted charges relating to offering Zimbabwe captain Graeme Cremer $30,000 to fix an international match last year and was banned.

Ikope has been charged under ICC’s Article 2.4.6 and Article 2.4.7, which includes offences such as refusing to co-operate, delaying and obstruction of an investigation into possible corruption by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU).

It is unclear if Ikope’s charges stem from the same incident as Nayer’s.“Mr Ikope has 14 days from June 11, 2018 to respond to the charges. The ICC will not make any further comment in respect of these charges at this stage,” the ICC said in a statement.