Forensic audit stays under wraps

Peter Chingoka: his promise that the report would be there for all to see has yet to be honoured © Getty Images

Despite an undertaking from Peter Chingoka, the then interim chairman Zimbabwe Cricket , that the report on the investigation of charges of financial maladministration would be made public, no one apart from ZC and ICC have seen it.

Chingoka announced sixteen months ago that an independent auditor "of international repute" would be asked to undertake a thorough investigation of the board's affairs following serious allegations from a number of stakeholders that large sums of money were unaccounted for.

However, the audit was ultimately entrusted to Ruzengwe and Partners, a small Harare-based outfit. And the terms of reference were drawn up by the interim board, the body at the heart of the allegations.

"Their report will be there for all to see," Chingoka said at the time. Unfortunately, although the initial report was delivered to the ICC in November, nobody outside the ICC and ZC has been allowed to know what it contains.

Few expected anything sensational. When the audit was announced, Clive Field, the former players' association chief executive, was sceptical. "In the time which has passed since these issues were highlighted last year, it seems to me there would have been ample opportunity to sanitise the books," he said. "All we could originally hope for was that the audit was done quickly."

A senior administrator said that ZC had "appointed a small one-partner local firm who had little chance of investigation the affairs as it was too complex. It would need the assistance of an international firm, as funding included sponsorship worldwide ... as the rights to the various tours would have been put together and sold by Octagon CSI and others and would need the international resources to follow through the paper trail and establish where the funding ended up."

The ICC remains tight lipped, only saying that Sir John Anderson, the chairman of New Zealand Cricket who is overseeing the process, is still in dialogue with Ruzengwe and Partners. It is hoped that things will be sorted in time for the ICC's AGM at the end of June. What the ICC cannot say is whether the audit will be placed in the public domain.

Against this backdrop of secrecy, Zimbabwe Cricket's coffers are about to swell by another US$11.5 million from the World Cup. Given the virtual total secrecy with which ZC operates, the ICC owes it to the game, to all those who worked tirelessly to build Zimbabwe cricket, and to the thousands of local cricketers who are scraping by with almost no equipment, to make public the report.