Cricket: Zimbabwe bosses get grilling

Zimbabwe Cricket managing director Ozias Bvute has been released from police custody after two days of questioning over whether he bought a house worth over £31,000 ($77,500) using a sponsor's cheque.

The sponsor's cheque was allegedly from this year's one-day series against New Zealand, the Daily Telegraph newspaper in London reported.

Bvute and Zimbabwe Cricket chairman, Peter Chingoka, were asked a searching series of 80 questions, the newspaper said.

The pair were arrested on Monday after voluntarily going to the police. Chief Superintendent Oliver Mandipaka said they would soon be charged with contravening the country's exchange control act.

This was contradicted, though, by Bvute, who said the attorney general would not be pressing charges.

Mandipaka responded: "As far as I am concerned, there is still a case pending against Mr Chingoka and Mr Bvute."

But he added that it was the prosecutor's prerogative to decide whether to pursue the case.

The Telegraph reported that the Zimbabwean government was concerned that in recent months Zimbabwe Cricket had not brought any money back into the country.

"They are said to have been banking their income from the sale of rights overseas and also paying players in US dollars instead of the increasingly worthless local currency," it reported.

Money received from selling the television rights of the home series against India and England had been banked abroad and the Zimbabwean government now wanted to know what Zimbabwe Cricket had done with some £12.6 million ($31.5 million) it was estimated to have received since January.

The NZ cricket tour to Zimbabwe was marked by political pressure on the Black Caps to boycott it due to President Robert Mugabe's human rights abuses, even though that could have cost New Zealand Cricket millions of dollars in penalties.

But the Government effectively blocked Zimbabwe's planned tour of New Zealand before Christmas when it announced that it was unlikely to issue visas to the Zimbabwean squad.

- NZPA