Diana Edulji rejects CFO's Australia travel to pay IPL players' fee

Ever since Santosh Rangnekar has been appointed the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the BCCI, he has been creating headache for his own organisation as well as for the employers.

From submitting a written statement to the Supreme Court about how BCCI treasurer Anirudh Chaudhary threatened to kill him in the sidelines of an official meeting in 2017 to putting up a proposal before the Committee of Administrators (COA) now to tour Down Under to pay "IPL players' fee" to Cricket Australia, Rangnekar has tried to be in the news.

This has forced COA member Diana Edulji to raise red flag once again and asked the CFO to provide her details that "why such a tour is necessary when such work could have been finished during the recent ICC meeting in Dubai".

Though the former India women's skipper was not available for comment, DNA has learnt from an insider that Edulji has put all Rangnekar's travels on hold till she is satisfied with the answer the CFO provides in this regard. Even the office bearers in BCCI — acting secretary Amitabh Choudhary and treasurer Anirudh — have expressed their displeasure over the trips of BCCI employees in recent times on one pretext or the other.

"It is laughable for everyone in BCCI that for reconciliation, CFO needs to travel all the way to Australia at a time when email and video calling is available. A few days back, National Cricket Academy (NCA) COO Tufan Ghosh went to Australia on BCCI's trip to actually watch Australian Open tennis. This was not even intimated to me, being in-charge of NCA, and I only came to know about his visit through social media posts. Now, it's the turn of CFO to go and pay IPL money to Cricket Australia, which could be done sitting here," Choudhary justified the objections raised by Edulji in this regard.

It is learnt that the CFO had even visited the Caribbean islands and the United States in the past for a similar purpose without the approval of COA.

"You had also visited West Indies and US for the settlement of accounts (reconciliation) and other work. Please provide a detailed note along with all the necessary entries passed in the books of accounts of BCCI and West Indies post your visits and have you taken approval from appropriate authority for passing those entries? We need a post trip report as you had visited for many days. Hence, daywise updates on your visit should be mentioned in the report," stated the letter shot off to CFO asking for details.

The confrontation between COA Edulji and CEO Johri only started last year during the time of BCCI's appraisals when the latter proposed a hefty hike of Rs 1 crore to CFO salary, to be turned down by the former.

"It is nothing but a case of pleasing certain people by handing them junkets," said the insider. "BCCI may be the first cricket body in the world that is sending its CFO to make payments to its vendors rather than them coming here to collect it, if any pending. How can this be not with the connivance of any big influential insider?" asked the official.