Sir Ronnie Flanagan has likened match-fixers to paedophiles while promising to deliver a World Cup free of corruption. The head of the International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU) also defended the decision to reduce the ban of the convicted spot-fixer Mohammad Amir, insisting the bowler’s early return to domestic cricket in Pakistan does not send out the wrong message or set a precedent that others could exploit.
Flanagan, the former chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, was speaking in Sydney in the buildup to the start of the World Cup next weekend.
While setting out the challenges the corruption unit faces during the tournament in Australia and New Zealand, he likened the predatory intentions of those keen to manipulate players and officials to those of child abusers. “In our line of work we too often meet and know there are rotten people out there, criminal people who will do all in their power to corrupt players and others with influence within the game,” he said. “They’ll trick them, they’ll coerce them, they’ll try and attract them. They’re almost like paedophiles in how they attempt to groom people into ultimately attempting to do what suits their nefarious intentions in terms of illegal betting and other elements of criminality.
“We have gone to great lengths to ensure that they don’t get their way and to ensure that they don’t ever get their way in this tournament. I would like to assure you and the paying public that they will be coming to a tournament where all of those involved will ensure it will be free from corruption or threat of corruption.”
The 65-year-old also explained his decision to allow Amir to return to cricket seven months before the scheduled end of his ban for spot-fixing on 2 September. Amir was suspended from all cricket for five years and jailed for his part in the conspiracy alongside Salman Butt, the former Pakistan captain, and Mohammad Asif which marred the country’s tour of England in 2010.
However, the ICC announced last week that the 22-year-old could return to domestic cricket in his homeland with immediate effect before a possible international comeback later this year, which could be against England in the United Arab Emirates this October.
Flanagan cleared Amir’s return after he interviewed the bowler in Lahore last month, citing his remorse, willingness to give information to the ACSU and his part in assisting the unit’s education programme.
“As the person who exercised his discretion to bring a reduction period into place I’d better be comfortable with it,” he said. “Quite recently the ICC board decided that people in such circumstances where they have fully admitted their part, where they certainly had shown true remorse, where they had acted to help us in all our anti-corruption efforts and where the home federation and the ICC gave their prior approval, I as chairman of the anti-corruption unit then had the ability to exercise discretion. So I looked at all these things very carefully and interviewed Amir several times and I’m certainly very satisfied that he met all those sorts of conditions.”
Asked what he would say to those who interpreted the leniency shown to Amir as a sign of the ICC going soft on corruption, Flanagan said: “Some people have said to me: ‘If you have zero tolerance how can this come about?’ An analogy I draw is one from criminal law. That deals with assaults which range right from a common assault right through to causing actual bodily harm, grievous bodily harm, manslaughter or murder. I think you can have absolute zero tolerance of all of that behaviour but it doesn’t mean that the same punishments should apply to each incident.
“So the consideration that I gave in relation to Amir, and it’s my discretion so I stand by it and take responsibility for it, was after a very rigorous examination of the entire case, very thorough consideration of his personal reaction – did he plead guilty? Did he admit his guilt? Was he truly remorseful for all that he’d done? I was determined in coming to my conclusion not to set any precedent that others may somehow take advantage of.
“The timeliness of that admission of guilt and the showing of that genuine remorse is important as well, so that it can’t be someone who for some quick relief or benefit retrospectively comes to that decision.
“So I fully respect the views of those who say that shouldn’t have happened. Personally I’m content that it was right, that it should have happened in the very limited way it has.”
