Dhaka – Following is a summary of conversations Shakib Al Hasan had with ICC-blacklisted bookie Deepak Aggarwal over a period of six months from mid-November 2017 to late-April 2018, as provided to the ICC’s ACU investigators.
In November 2017, he was a member of the Dhaka Dynamites, a team which participated in the Bangladesh Premier League, played between 4 November and 12
December 2017.
He was aware that his telephone number had been provided to Aggarwal by another person who was known to Al Hasan. Aggarwal had asked this other person to provide him with contacts for players playing in the Bangladesh Premier League.
In mid-November 2017, at the instigation of Aggarwal, he exchanged various
WhatsApp messages with Aggarwal in which Aggarwal sought to meet him.
In January 2018, Shakib was selected as part of the Bangladesh team participating in a Tri-series involving Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. During this series, he and Aggarwal engaged in further WhatsApp conversations.
On January 19, 2018, he received a WhatsApp message from Mr Aggarwal congratulating him for being named man of the match in that day’s game. Aggarwal followed this message with a message saying “do we work in this or I wait till the IPL”.
The reference to “work” in this message was a reference to him providing Inside Information to Aggarwal. He did not report this contact from Aggarwal to the ACU or any other anti-corruption authority.
On January 23, 2018, he received another WhatsApp message from Aggarwal in which Aggarwal made another approach to him to provide him with Inside Information, saying “Bro anything in this series?”
Shakib confirmed to the ACU that this message related to Aggarwal’s request to him to provide him with Inside Information in relation to the ongoing Tri-Series. He did not report this request for Inside Information from Aggarwal to the ACU or any other anti-corruption authority.
On April 26, 2018, the Shakib played for the Sunrisers Hyderabad team in its IPL match against Kings XI Punjab. He received a WhatsApp message from Aggarwal that day asking him whether a particular player was going to be playing in the game that day i.e. again asking for Inside Information.
Aggarwal continued this conversation with him by talking about bitcoins, dollar
accounts and asked him for his dollar account details. During this conversation, he told Aggarwal that he wanted to meet him “first”.
These messages on April 26, 2018 included a number of deleted messages. The Bangladesh all-rounder confirmed to investigators that these deleted messages contained requests from Aggarwal for Inside Information.
He also confirmed to the investigators that he had concerns over Aggarwal, feeling he was a bit “dodgy”, and that, following their conversations, he had the feeling that Aggarwal was a bookie. However, he did not report any of the contact and approaches received from Aggarwal on April 26, 2018 to the ACU or any other anti-corruption authority.
Shakib also told the ACU that he did not accept or act upon any of the approaches he received from Aggarwal, in particular, he did not provide him with any of the information requested, nor did he accept or receive any money or other reward from Aggarwal. However, as stated before, he did not at any time report any of the approaches to the ACU or any other relevant authority, and that proved to be his downfall.
Based on these findings, on Tuesday Shakib was banned by the ICC from all cricket for two years, with one year of that sentence suspended, after he accepted three charges of breaching the ICC anti-corruption code.UNB
