BCB starts digging deep into deals

The ad-hoc committee of the Bangladesh Cricket Board will review all commercial contracts, major purchases, tenders and expenditures on development projects from January 2000 to July 29, 2007, said officials.
The Board, in its executive committee meeting on Thursday, formed a five-member committee for the purpose with M Abdul Momen and Monowara Anis Khan as its chairman and vice-chairman respectively.
The other members of the committee are lawyer Ashraful Islam, banker Salim RF Hossain and chartered accountant RM Hasan.
The committee has been given an initial timeframe of three months within which it would conduct the review and report to the Board, said the BCB in a statement on Friday.
Meanwhile, the BCB’s decision to review the contracts, purchases, tenders and development expenses only from January 2000 has raised questions as there were certain allegations of irregularities before that period also.
‘It seems this is a politically motivated decision. If the BCB wants to review the questionable deals, they should go beyond the specified period,’ said an organiser asking not to be named.
Ahmed Sazzadul Alam, the chairman of the media committee and the BCB spokesman, however denied the allegation.
‘The Board thought reviewing the deals and expenses since January 2000 would be practical. Going beyond the time would make things unnecessarily complicated,’ said Alam.
‘All major commercial contracts of the BCB including television rights deal with ESPN and marketing rights deal with Nimbus were signed from January 2000 to July 2007. So I think it is fair to set this timeframe,’ he said.
Monowara Anis Khan, the vice-chairman of the review committee, said they were not asked to look into any deal in particular. ‘We will review everything. The BCB did not set any priority for us,’ she said.
‘We will decide about our own priority in our first meeting,’ said Monowara, also the chairman of BCB’s audit committee.