Dubai: Legendary Sri Lanka batsman Sanath Jayasuriya was Tuesday banned for two years after admitting to obstruct an anti-corruption probe by ‘destroying’ the phones which were sought as evidence by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
Jayasuriya admitted breaching the anti-corruption unit (ACU) code of the global body on two separate counts. “As a result of the admissions, he has accepted a sanction of a two-year period of ineligibility,” the ICC stated.
However, he wasn’t given the maximum punishment of five years for his breach after the world body took his ‘previous good conduct’ into account. Jayasuriya’s sanction will be a backdated one starting from October 16, 2018.
“It is unfortunate that even though I provided the ICC ACU with all the information as demanded by the officials the ICC ACU thought it fit to charge me under the Code although there were no allegations of corruption, betting or misuse of inside information,” Jayasuriya issued a statement after ICC imposed the sanctions.
Jayasuriya was questioned as part of the ICC’s investigation of wide scale corruption in Sri Lankan cricket.
Alex Marshall, ICC General Manager – ACU said: “This conviction under the Code demonstrates the importance of participants in cricket co-operating with investigations. Compelling participants to cooperate under the Code is a vital weapon in our efforts to rid our sport of corruptors. These rules are essential to maintain the integrity of our sport.
As per the detailed judgement uploaded by the ICC, Jayasuriya was asked to hand over his mobile devices after ACU GM Alex Marshall was satisfied that information on the mobile devices belonging to him in the period between January 1, 2017 to September 22, 2017 might be relevant to the investigation.”
Marshall instructed the ACU team to ‘demand’ the two mobile phones.
Accordingly, Jayasuriya was investigated by the ICC ACU unit on three specific dates – September 22, 23 and October 5 in 2017.
As per the copy of the judgement, the ACU team had specifically asked ‘Jayasuriya to give details of all mobile phones that he owned, used or had access to’.
Jayasuriya, September 22, 2017 informed the investigators that he had two mobile devices. However the prolific batsman of yesteryears then changed his statement on the very next day (September 23, 2017) and divulged that he had two more mobile phones which got lost between May 15 to 23/24, 2017. These two numbers had last digits of ‘888’ and ‘088’.
He told the ACU officials that those two numbers were not in use.
However, Jayasuriya had no inkling that the ‘investigators called up on the numbers with last digits ‘888’ and the phone rang contrary to his statement.” But on the second occasion when ICC officials tried, there was an automated response.
Jayasuriya October 5 was represented by his legal counsel, the player said that he had destroyed the earlier phone after a private video went viral and he was ‘under stress’.
But according to his lawyer, it was his driver, who retrieved the sim card and put it in another phone. It was later handed over to Jayasuriya, who then used that earlier ‘888’ sim to check text messages.