(Reuters) – Cricket Australia boss Nick Hockley said on Sunday police were assisting the governing body after a confidential report made to its anti-corruption unit was leaked to the media.
Melbourne’s The Age newspaper reported on Sunday that it had received a recording of a phone call between a woman and Cricket Australia’s former integrity chief, Sean Carroll, in which the woman alleged a player was using cocaine. The woman, who described herself as a high-class escort, said the unidentified player had been “snorting lines” of cocaine and dancing naked on a balcony while partying.
It was not clear when the phone call took place. Carroll left Cricket Australia (CA) a year ago.
Hockley said the woman’s report was “unsubstantiated” and “historical” but that the board had contacted police over the leak.
“Any stealing of confidential information is a crime,” Hockley told reporters at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday. “So we … are getting assistance from Victorian police.
“Clearly it’s really important that people are able to make contact (with) our integrity line in full confidence knowing that’s all going to be kept secure.”
The Age said the recording had been sent to the paper via an encrypted email service from an anonymous address.
The source of the leak claimed to be a former CA staffer “who wanted to expose flaws in the integrity unit”.
Hockley said CA reviewed its integrity reporting processes regularly to ensure they were “absolutely best practice.”
The leak comes just over a month after a confidential investigation by CA’s integrity unit of former captain Tim Paine was made public, prompting the wicket-keeper to step down from the captaincy and withdraw from the team.
Paine admitted to sending sexually explicit text messages to a former Cricket Tasmania staffer in 2017 but was cleared of wrongdoing by CA’s investigation the following year.
