Damaging revelations against Cronje

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, JULY 23. The legal challenge mounted by former South African cricket team captain, Hansie Cronje, against the `life ban' imposed on him by the United Cricket Board of South Africa, as well as his attempts to secure `final and unqualified' indemnity against possible prosecution, have received a setback with the latest revelations in the Hansie Cronje saga.

According to a report in Sunday's Sunday Telegraph of London, Cronje held 19 secret bank accounts having deposits of over Rands 10 million. All these deposits were made, according to the report, during the period when Cronje led the South African cricket team. The report also claimed that Cronje owned some eight properties.

These damaging revelations come in the wake of an ongoing sustained campaign by Cronje and his supporters seeking his rehabilitation. The sums allegedly secreted away are far larger than the amount Cronje admitted he had received by way of bribes from gamblers and bookmakers in his deposition before the King Commission of Inquiry into `Cricket match fixing and related matters'.

The Commission, headed by Mr Justice Edwin King, a retired judge of the Cape High Court, never reconvened after it adjourned on June 26 last year, after holding 11 days of hearing, despite announcing several subsequent dates for resumption. Mr King finally announced on February 22 this year that he had requested the President Thabo Mbeki to wind up the Commission, citing in justification of this decision the threatened court action by Cronje's lawyers challenging the constitutional validity of his (King's) appointment.

Paragraph 6 of that announcement reads thus: ``There is evidence in the form of an uncompleted forensic report by a private firm of auditors; the disclosures therein could be taken up by an appropriate agency.'' The present revelations are apparently based on the findings of this forensic audit.

Hansie Cronje has, however, denied these allegations. In a radio interview this morning, he said: ``I can tell you for a fact that every single one of the bank accounts that I have owned in my entire life or opened were given to the King Commission and to the forensic auditors. Every single one of them. Not one was concealed.'' He had made much the same point in an earlier radio interview last week that he had told ``everything, and much more,'' while answering questions on why he was challenging the life ban imposed on him by the UCBSA. His petition challenging the ban is scheduled to be heard by the Pretoria High Court on 26 September.

The final report of the King Commission, submitted on June 29 this year, however, failed to make any finding, or even express any opinion, on Hansie Cronje's `credibility'. This raises questions and doubts not merely about the claims and denials by Cronje and his lawyers but also opens the issue of the `conditional indemnity' against criminal prosecution granted to him by the National Director of Pubic Prosecutions before the commencement of the Commission's hearings. The formalising of this into an unqualified indemnity, as Justice King explained citing a biblical text to Cronje before he began his deposition (The Truth Shall Make You Free), depended on King's `satisfaction' that Cronje had made full revelation in respect of his involvement in match-fixing and other issues before the Commission.

However, despite being required to express an opinion on Cronje's credibility (read truthfulness), Mr King in his final report said, ``Due to subsequent developments that is, the inability of the Commission to resume its hearings, in the light of Cronje's threatened legal challenge0 the Commissioner is not in a position to express such an opinion.''

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