Pakistan’s cyber-crime agency, the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA), is reportedly looking into cricketers Mohammad Rizwan and Imam-ul-Haq’s ‘financial transactions’. Both cricketers appeared before the investigative agency on Thursday and sought more time to respond to their queries.
According to GEO, the crime agency will conduct ‘forensic and technical analysis’ of their mobile phones, which will include looking into their monetary transactions and details of their bank accounts during their time in England. The two players were in the UK for less than a month, participating in a warm-up fixture and two of the first three Tests, before being asked to return home following a loss at Lord’s.
Imam picked up a calf injury on the
opening day of the Test and didn’t bat at all, leading to suspicions that he was faking the issue. Rizwan, on the other hand, didn’t cross single digits across the two innings and got out playing some poor shots.
Initially, reports said that the two players would have to answer for their conduct before a PCB inquiry panel, but the matter got more curious when it was revealed that the board took their phones into custody and transferred the data before sending them home.
The latest report claims the NCCIA will look for any ‘suspicious’ transactions before looking at the source and destinations of their money. Moreover, the investigators will also check their text messages and interactions. Fans and observers have been drawing comparisons between this and the spot-fixing scandal of 2010, but neither the NCCIA nor the PCB has said that their investigations involve any such issue.
There have also been rumors of the PCB being concerned about ‘dressing-room leaks’.
It needs to be noted that the NCCIA comes directly under the purview of the PCB chairman, Mohsin Naqvi, who is also the interior minister of the country.
