Cricket board asks hockey body to return Rs10 million

KARACHI: The PCB refused to help PHF financially for sending the Green-shirts to Belgium, ‘The News’ has learnt.
The PCB has sent a communiqué to PHF, saying that it was unable to provide any funds and instead asked when the hockey body would return PCB’s Rs10 million which was given in early 2000s.
The PCB attached the copies of several reminders for returning the money.
The PCB said that their audit reports were not completed due to failure of PHF to return the money.
Meanwhile, the PHF audit has been continuing for the past several days in Lahore and the audit committee has been reviewing the expenditure of PHF during the tenure of president Qasim Zia and secretary Asif Bajwa.
The federal government provided more than Rs1 billion to PHF during their tenure which was allegedly misused.
The federal government established the committee as finance minister Ishaq Dar and information minister Pervaiz Rasheed were critical of PHF and wanted the audit of the funds given to PHF.
Informed sources divulged to this correspondent that the audit committee had called previous and current high officials of PHF and asked details of the expenditures.
The audit committee has informed Pakistan Auditor General office that PHF is not cooperating in the way it should. It says the PHF is not providing the details necessary for the audit, sources said.
The committee has asked the authorities concerned to direct the PHF to fully cooperate.
The sources confirmed that the Auditor General office had directed the ministry of IPC to instruct the PHF officials to provide all the details demanded by the committee.
PHF president Akhtar Rasool and secretary Rana Mujahid have so far not left for Belgium despite having made preparations for the tour.
They were ready to go to Belgium to see the Olympic qualifying rounds.
The sources said they were under pressure because the PHF was facing acute shortage of funds. “How is it possible for them to go in these conditions,” former Olympian Qamar Zia said. “There are no funds; why is public money being spent on joy trips,” he said.
“Three coaches of the team did not go with the team due to shortage of funds but at the same time PHF officials want to go to Belgium,” he said.
Qamar said the audit committee should call former Olympians to hear their point of view over how PHF spent millions of rupees for their personal interest.