Ex-Sri Lanka pacer Dilhara Lokuhettige found guilty of fixing under ICC Anti-Corruption Code

Colombo: Cricket’s governing body on Thursday found former Sri Lanka fast bowler Dilhara Lokuhettige guilty of three charges relating to corruption during the inaugural T10 tournament in Sharjah. [caption id=“attachment_9249961” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] File image of Dilhara Lokuhettige. AFP[/caption] Lokuhettige was found guilty on all three counts after being formally charged in November 2019 before a three-member tribunal, the International Cricket Council said. It said sanctions will follow against the player, who has already been suspended. “The three-member tribunal concluded, by a majority, that the ICC had jurisdiction to bring the charges against Lokuhettige and was unanimous in deciding the merits of the case,” the ICC said. He was accused of being a “party to an effort to fix” or “influence improperly” an international game, and of “directly soliciting and inducing a player”. He has also been accused of failing to disclose approaches to take part in corruption. Lokuhettige, who played nine one-day internationals and two Twenty20 internationals for Sri Lanka between 2005 and 2013, featured in an Al Jazeera documentary, “Cricket’s Match Fixers”, in 2018. In the documentary, he spoke to an undercover reporter about fixing a match. In November, another Sri Lankan player, Nuwan Soysa, was also found guilty of three counts of corruption relating to the same T10 tournament. Sri Lanka has faced mounting scrutiny in recent years over cricket corruption. The country’s former skipper Sanath Jayasuriya was banned from all cricket for two years in February 2019 after admitting to two breaches of the anti-corruption code. A former sports minister, Harin Fernando, introduced tough anti-corruption laws in 2019 after saying that the ICC considered Sri Lanka the most corrupt cricket nation.