Lanka T10 franchise owner arrested on suspicion of match-fixing after foreign player flagged a fixing-related activity.
Lanka T10 team owner Prem Thakkur has been arrested on match-fixing charges.
A day after the event started, on Thursday. Thakkur was taken into custody and appeared in the Colombo Magistrate’s Court on Friday. He has subsequently been placed under remand until December 16.
The Sri Lanka Sports Police Unit detained Thakkur, an Indian national, in accordance with the 2019 Prevention of Offences Relating to Sports Act, according to Sri Lanka Police. At a hotel in Kandy, where the Lanka T10 competition is taking place, he was taken into custody.
It is known that Thakkur’s fixing strategy was reported by a foreign player. At Sri Lanka Cricket’s request, a representative of the ICC anti-corruption team is in Sri Lanka to supervise the competition, much like in the LPL earlier this year.
The director of the Lanka T10 event, Samantha Dodanwela, has affirmed that the competition “will go ahead as scheduled” despite SLC’s silence on the subject.
After Tamim Rahman, a co-owner of the LPL team Dambulla Thunders, was arrested in May on suspicion of match-fixing, this is the second franchise event in Sri Lanka this year where a team owner has been detained under the nation’s sports anti-corruption code. Match-fixing was made illegal in Sri Lanka in 2019, making it the first country in South Asia to do so. Violations of sports corruption are punishable by a variety of fines and up to ten years in prison.
The Innovative Production Group, T Ten Sports Management, and T Ten Global Sports. It also runs a number of other T10 franchise leagues worldwide. They are the consortium managing and running the event rights for the Lanka T10. It is Sri Lanka’s first attempt to host a T10 franchise league.