HYDERABAD: A ‘highly confidential’ mail from Santosh Daware, CAG nominee on the Apex Council of the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA), alleging ‘financial mismanagement’ has spurred the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) into action.
Hemang Amin, CEO (interim) of BCCI, on Tuesday sent an email to the HCA officials, seeking an explanation within 15 days. “… CAG nominee in the Apex Council of HCA, Santosh Daware, has, inter alia, raised certain concerns regarding the functioning of HCA and has alleged that the same is against the rules and regulations of HCA.
“In this regard, we request you to provide point-wise explanation/reply to the issues raised by Daware within 15 days from the receipt of this email,” he wrote.
Amin too wanted the HCA to furnish the BCCI with a copy of the SLP order in the Supreme Court. “Further, we understand that the Supreme Court has passed an order dated 15 December 2021 in the Special Leave Petition bearing no. 6779 of 2021 wherein the Supreme Court has proposed to set up a committee to oversee the functioning of HCA. We request you to provide a copy of the same,” he wrote.
Amin’s mail was in response to a mail sent by Daware to the CEO on February 25. “As the nominated CAG representative to the HCA Apex Council and as a civil servant with audit expertise, I wish to apprise you of the following matters related to the HCA finances that need your immediate attention and appropriate action. Kindly treat this communication as ‘highly confidential',” Daware wrote.
The CAG nominee raised three points of concern with the BCCI CEO. “The HCA has the same auditors functioning as both internal and external auditors. This is not an acceptable audit practice as they need to be different to maintain the necessary independence for an audit,” he said.
The second point was regarding the Apex Council meetings. “As you would agree, with the adoption of Lodha Committee recommendations into the constitution of BCCI and the affiliated members such as HCA, there is a need to convene Apex Council meetings at least once every three months to effectively take decisions, review accounts and track progress. However, there has been no Apex Council meeting convened over the last six months. All the decisions taken in the interim have been taken unilaterally. I have not been asked to attend any meetings during this time and have no visibility of the status of the accounts or audit matters. The monthly accounts and budgets have not been presented or reviewed,” he said.
Daware pointed out that purchases were being made without following due process. “As I understand, several high value purchases have been made recently without following due processes and procedures. As per the prevailing process, any purchase of more than Rs 5 lakh needs to go through a tender process and a vendor evaluation needs to be conducted prior to selecting a vendor. I am not aware of any tenders floated for the high value purchases that are being made and there are no updates sent to the Apex Council members or listed on the website for any transparency. In several cases, I understand the purchases are made directly from a single vendor without any quotations or evaluation. These are matters of serious concern and need to be thoroughly audited and investigated for misappropriation of funds and fraud,” he said.
Daware also wrote, “Given the above facts, any Utilisation Certificates issued under the current circumstances without thorough audit and physical verification of records and assets are subject to scrutiny and cannot be acceptable. As the CAG representative, my role is to help HCA operate in a fair and transparent way to manage the finances and accounts. At this juncture, given what I have laid out above, I am not comfortable to attest to such a position.”
Daware had sought the BCCI’s intervention in the matter. “As the parent body, BCCI should take note of the above and take necessary steps immediately to put an end to this financial mismanagement and lead HCA in the right direction,” he wrote.
