|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
Investigators question Azharuddin
Posted: Thursday June 22, 2000 11:54 AM
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Federal investigators on Thursday questioned former Indian cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin, who allegedly introduced former South African skipper Hansie Cronje to an Indian bookie in a match-fixing scandal that has shaken the sport. Azharuddin refused to talk to reporters who mobbed him as he emerged from the office of the Central Bureau of Investigation in New Delhi, where officials questioned him for two and a half hours. "This is a preliminary inquiry. We are yet to register a case," said S.M. Khan, a spokesman for the CBI, which has questioned more than half a dozen cricketers and officials in the past month. "We recorded Azharuddin's statement." Last month, police in New Delhi charged former South African skipper Cronje and three other South African players of fraud and cheating. The government then asked the federal police to probe the match-fixing scandal. Testifying before a commission of inquiry probing corruption in the sport in South Africa, Cronje said last week in Cape Town that he had accepted a $30,000 bribe from a bookie whom Azharuddin introduced to him in 1996. Azharuddin denied Cronje's accusation, which was made before the commission last Thursday. Cronje claimed that he had only correctly forecasted the outcome of a match. But he confessed to receiving money on several occasions from bookmakers since 1996.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
