Oman player Yousef Abdulrahim Al Balushi has been charged with breaching cricket’s anti-corruption rules and has been provisionally suspended with immediate effect.
Al Balushi has been charged with the following four breaches of the ICC Anti-Corruption Code, all related to the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifiers 2019 held in the United Arab Emirates:
Breach of Article 2.1.1 – being party to an agreement or effort to fix or contrive in any way the result, progress, conduct or any other aspect of matches in the ICC World T20 Qualifiers 2019.
Breach of Article 2.1.4 – Attempting to solicit, induce, entice, persuade, encourage or intentionally facilitate a Participant to breach Article 2.1.
Breach of Article 2.4.4 – failing to report the approaches or invitations that you received from three different individuals to be a party to an agreement or effort to fix matches in the ICC World T20 Qualifiers 2019.
Breach of Article 2.4.7 – Obstructing or delaying an investigation carried out by the ACU in relation to possible Corrupt Conduct under the Code, including by concealing or tampering with information that may be relevant to that investigation and/or that may be evidence of or lead to the discovery of evidence of Corrupt Conduct under the Code.
Al Balushi has 14 days from 23 January 2020 to respond to the charges. The ICC will not make any further comment in respect of these charges at this stage.
The ICC Anti-Corruption Code can be found here.
Name of Author: ICC
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is the global governing body for cricket, founded in 1909 as the Imperial Cricket Conference. Renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965, it became the ICC in 1987. Headquartered in Dubai, UAE, the ICC has 108 member nations.