Jayesh George Faces Rs 2.5 Crore Corruption Charge

With less than a week remaining before the BCCI election takes place, Jayesh George has landed in hot water. Earlier this week, he filed his nomination for the post of joint-secretary unopposed. However, the president of Kerala Cricket Association (KCA) is facing a tricky situation at home even before he could take charge as the BCCI official.

Jayesh George is facing charges of money laundering. A group of former players and former members of KCA called ‘We for Clean Cricket Movement’ alleged that Jayesh George has committed several financial irregularities during the time he was an office-bearer of the state cricket unit.

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The ex-players and officials have accused Jayesh George of swindling almost 2.5 crore from the state cricket unit during the time he served as the treasurer, joint-secretary or secretary of the KCA. The group is now demanding an independent audit of the state body’s financial accounts.

One of the allegations is that KCA paid three companies — Dotted Lines, Yakka Associates and Green wickets — with alleged suspicious credentials . The group has alleged that Dotted Lines was assigned the task of posting Facebook updates of KCA activities without entering into any contract with state cricket unit.

“We are not against KCA but we are against corrupt individuals in KCA. We have only cited misappropriation of funds on the part of Jayesh where we have been able to gather proof,” Pramod K, former district secretary of Thrissur District Cricket Association, was quoted as saying by The Times of India.

The group has also alleged that Jayesh George and his team used the order of the ombudsman to remove the former president TC Mathew from the primary membership of KCA.  But in the very same order, the ombudsman had stated that the secretary of the KCA will be entitled to prosecute Mathew for criminal offences by complaining at an appropriate police station. But no such action has been taken by the KCA. Pramod, however, filed individual cases against the former KCA president at three different police stations but no action has been taken yet.

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“When we had produced all documentary evidence against Jayesh’s alleged corrupt activities and the trial was entering the last stage, they removed the ombudsman and named a new one, fearing their irregularities will be exposed. We have challenged this in the high court,” said Pramod.

Jayesh George, on his part, has rubbished the allegations levelled against him. He went on to say that all the allegations against him are baseless.

“Firstly, all these allegations raised are the complaints filed by certain individuals before the ombudsman and I have filed my counter replies to it. The allegations raised are from 2013 to 2018. I assumed charge as secretary of KCA only on January 2, 2017,” said Jayesh George.

“So most of these corruption allegations raised are beyond my purview as I was not a signing authority in KCA then, and if questions have to be asked, those have to be addressed to Mr Mathew (president) and Mr TN Ananthanarayanan (secretary) who were in charge at the time. When I became secretary, I, in fact, terminated the agreement KCA had with Dotted Lines. All the allegations levelled against me are totally baseless,” he added.

Jayesh, meanwhile, will be a part of the new BCCI office-bearers if everything goes well. Former India skipper Sourav Ganguly will take over as the president while Jay Shah will be the new secretary. The election will take place on October 23 at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai.