The BBC’s ‘Panorama’ team tries to organise a fix with notorious fixer Munawar, who is known to have links to Indian crime gang D Company. The investigation is later taken up by a major English broadsheet newspaper which pushes Munawar to name players.
In 2012, the BBC’s Panorama team, together with a private production company, embarked on a project to uncover corruption in cricket. The trail took them to India, where a man who goes by the name of Aneel Munawar said he had the ability to organise spot-fixing in matches, where the run rate can be doctored over a specified number of overs.
The Panorama investigation subsequently fizzled out and the production company then joined forces with a major UK broadsheet newspaper, which tried to organise a sting on an England player of Asian background.
When that failed, the team turned their attention to a player who had already been banned in the wake of a spot-fixing scandal in the hope that he would help recruit other cricketers. That also ended in tears.
In the first part of the SCMP’s three-part series, we track the Panorama team in their efforts to convince Munawar to name players and how the investigation was eventually taken up by the newspaper.
It was the summer of 2013 and the BBC Panorama team, working with an independent TV production company (TVPC), had spent one year covertly filming meetings with a man going by the name of Aneel Munawar, whom Indian authorities said was a senior member of organised crime group D Company and part of its gambling section based in Dubai.
Munawar was said to be responsible for fixing cricket matches for bookie syndicates under D Company’s control.
The investigation team behind the iconic, multi-award winning Panorama programme had been carefully reeling in their catch. They had gathered extensive prima facie evidence of corruption at the highest levels of cricket at each secretly filmed meeting.
Munawar, to prove that he could influence the batting run rate during matches, had even given the investigation team a fix free of charge. Munawar reportedly explained to the team what would happen during specified overs in the game and the outcome played out exactly as he had predicted.
The next phase of the investigation was to find out which players were involved in the fixes but the team – posing as principals of a gambling syndicate representing high net worth investors – was acutely aware that the only way Munawar would agree to reveal names was if they made a commitment to pay for a fix.
Munawar, after several meetings, finally asked the team to commit at a price of US$60,000. He did not need the money up front, simply a firm commitment and a local Indian guarantor.
The team, though, needed BBC management approval for such a large amount to be released and they applied to the broadcaster’s editorial policy (EdPol) and legal departments for permission. According to a source, both departments agreed on the grounds that there was overwhelming public interest for such activities to be exposed.
The investigative team were devastated. They had worked long and hard to penetrate the underbelly of organised cricket match-fixing and were on the brink of exposing a major scandal but were stopped abruptly in their tracks.
They had reached exhaustion point with Munawar and could not go any further without committing to a fix. So, with the blessing of the Panorama editors, the TVPC began seeking out new co-production partners willing to finance a fix and continue the investigation.
It was now August 2014. After discussions with a number of media groups in the United Kingdom, the TVPC eventually held talks with a major broadsheet popular with the middle class that boasted a top-notch investigations department. The team was headed by one of the country’s leading journalists who previously worked with the same company on high-profile stories. So mutual trust and respect was already there.
In addition, the broadsheet’s overall head of news and line manager to its investigation department was a highly regarded reporter famed for exposing a major political scandal.
The BBC, however, was reluctant to remove themselves completely from the investigation. The Panorama journalists were still smarting and were loath to let their months of hard work go to waste.
So it was agreed for the BBC to assist in funding ancillary expenses such as flights and hotels but they could not be seen to drive the investigation. In return, the broadcaster would be granted access to new material so that when the paper broke the story the BBC could simultaneously run a news piece or even a hastily compiled Panorama programme.
The paper’s head of news, though, imposed two conditions before the funds would be released: the fix had to involve the England team; and Munawar must name the England players before a fixed match.
England were touring Sri Lanka for a seven-match one-day international series from November 21 to December 16, 2014 and Munawar would be there. The newly allied team of the TVPC and newspaper, therefore, decided that Colombo would be the new theatre of undercover operations for the revived investigation.
The same undercover operative who forged a relationship with Munawar when the BBC led the investigation was to renew those ties. The team flew into Colombo in early December but there was an air of uncertainty.
Munawar wanted a firm financial commitment for a fix but the team were beholden to the conditions imposed by the head of news. The source, who was part of the joint team who landed in Colombo but prefers to remain anonymous because of continuing undercover work in sports corruption, said the operative was sceptical. Several prior meetings were held with Munawar, a free fix was provided and still no commitment. Munawar’s patience was running thin.
The operative felt Munawar would either think he was dealing with incompetence or sense something more sinister was going on.
Indeed, the investigative team was even naive enough to think Munawar would introduce players to the undercover operative. That was never going to happen.
The operative met Munawar at the Taj Sumadra Hotel in Colombo and he followed the directive by asking him for names of England players. As predicted, the bookie was having none of it.
“Look, I respect you, but please, the way you people are conducting business makes me feel very uneasy,” Munawar was reported to have said. “Who are you people? You make a lot of promises but you have not given us one penny. So seriously, you are asking me to name players?”
The operative knew, at that point, that he was at a dead end. The team’s desire to expose corruption in cricket remained strong but the Munawar chapter of the investigation was effectively over. Although they did meet briefly again in January 2015, the talks failed to take the process any further.
Two years later, in 2016, Al Jazeera Investigations took up the case and produced the two-part Cricket’s Match Fixers: The Munawar Files released in 2018.
Meanwhile, despite their frustration, the newspaper and TVPC team were far from ready to give up. Their instructions were to focus on England players and Munawar was simply a means to get there. Months earlier, the team had already opened a parallel investigation in which they did not need a middle man.
They intended to approach an England player directly. And they had already identified their target – a player of Asian origin. The plan, however, was to blow up in their faces.
That story here in part 2 of our three-part series.
