CCI suspends Raj Singh Dungarpur for two years

Raj Singh Dungarpur, the former president of the BCCI, has been suspended from the Cricket Club of India (CCI) after six charges, relating to financial irregularities during his presidential tenure at the CCI, were levelled against him.

Explaining the charges brought forth in its report after a probe into the alleged irregularities by tax, audit and advisory firm KPMG, CCI president IM Kadri said Dungarpur failed to come up with satisfactory answers.

"We asked him to reply to these maintainable charges and he only glossed over them," Kadri told PTI. "These were serious charges and the committee voted 8-4 that they were maintainable and he was suspended for two years. We have nothing against Raj Singh personally, but we want to save the 75-year-old institution and can't just gloss over these charges."

Among the charges listed in the KPMG report are: indiscriminate distribution of 177 temporary memberships without charging the requisite fee of Rs 1,800 per week, maintaining a room in the club but not paying rent when he was not occupying it and taking travel and dearness allowance from the BCCI as well as CCI for attending board meetings as the club's representative.

Kadri said that most of the alleged financial irregularities committed were clubbed under "miscellaneous expenses". "The distribution of temporary memberships, which are not to be given to people residing in Mumbai in the first place and need to be proposed and seconded by executive committee members, were maintained as a separate register. But this was not brought to the notice of the auditors during the audits of the club's accounts."

The executive committee has worked out the losses to the club because of the waiver of fees for the temporary memberships as Rs 1.3 crore. "He also gave complimentary accommodation to people in the CCI Chambers (opposite the main club house) without anyone's knowledge and this too is one of the maintainable charges reported by KPMG."

Another charge levelled against Dungarpur, who was the club's president for 13 years, was that his personal expenses running to the tune of Rs 22 lakh were passed on as club's expenses, according to Kadri.

"It's a wrong notion that the probe by KPMG was ordered only after he quit his post. In fact, the decision to conduct a probe into the club's functioning was taken when he was in the chair at the executive committee meeting. Only the name of the firm was finalised after he quit," Kadri said.