This is the first part of a series on an external audit report that examines the books of the Delhi & District Cricket Association, between the years 2012 and 2015. The second part, which details the findings of the audit report—these include embezzlement, fraud and gross mismanagement—is here. The final part of the series, which discusses why, despite the audit's findings and court orders, reform within the DDCA is a long way away, is here.

On 10 October, the Delhi & District Cricket Association (DDCA) submitted a special audit report of its accounts before the Delhi High Court. In January, the high court appointed the retired Supreme Court justice Vikramjit Sen as the administrator of the state-level cricketing body, and directed him to appoint an external auditor to examine association’s accounts. Sen engaged the firm GS Mathur & Company, in May, to audit the DDCA’s books for the financial years between 2012 and 2015.

The auditors found numerous instances of financial and procedural malfeasance in the cricketing body’s functioning. The firm’s audit report explicitly names members of the DDCA’s executive body as being involved in unscrupulous practices over the years 2012–2015. Prominent among these are SP Bansal and Anil Khanna—a former president and a former general secretary respectively, Bansal and Khanna were suspended in January 2015 on allegations of financial misconduct. Conspicuous by its absence in the report, however, is the name of the finance minister, Arun Jaitley—who directly headed the DDCA for over half the time period covered by the audit.

In its report, the firm noted that the appointment letter defined the scope of the audit: “to examine malafide decisions, wilful negligence, conflict of interest, losses suffered, post contract damages etc., misuse of authority, overstepping of authority, violation of prescribed rules, procedures, laws, acts etc.” It also included an “audit of procurement, capital works … likely frauds, embezzlements, irregularities, mismanagement of affairs, decisions or transactions, prejudicial to the interest of DDCA, quantification of financial loss … weaknesses in systems, procedures and internal control in DDCA.”

According to the report, the DDCA was liable on nearly all accounts. Among others, the report indicts the DDCA for: embezzlement in purchase of cricket-match tickets to the tune of Rs 231.82 lakh; withdrawing nearly Rs 18 lakh in the name of meetings for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which was subsequently used for “fictitious payments”; granting unauthorised loans of over Rs 155 lakh in January 2014 to three private companies, at least one of which was linked to the then DDCA president SP Bansal; and the payments of Rs 7.70 lakh that “seems to be bogus” and “appears to be embezzled.”