Shohaly Akhter banned for five years under ICC anti-corruption code

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has banned Bangladesh player Shohaly Akhter from all cricket for five years after she admitted breaching five provisions of the ICC Anti-Corruption Code.

Shohaly admitted to being in breach of the following provisions of the Code:

Article 2.1.1: Fixing or contriving in any way or otherwise influencing improperly or being a party to any agreement or effort to fix or contrive in any way or otherwise influence improperly, the result, progress, conduct or any other aspect of any International Match, including (without limitation) by deliberately underperforming therein.

Article 2.1.3: Seeking, accepting, offering or agreeing to accept any bribe or other Reward to (a) fix or to contrive in any way or otherwise to influence improperly the result, progress, conduct or any other aspect of any International Match or (b) to ensure for Betting or other corrupt purposes the occurrence of a particular incident in an International Match.

Article 2.1.4: Directly or indirectly soliciting, inducing, enticing, instructing, persuading, encouraging or intentionally facilitating any Participant to breach any of the foregoing provisions of this Article 2.1.

Article 2.4.4: Failing to disclose to the ACU (without unnecessary delay) full details of any approaches or invitations received by the Participant to engage in Corrupt Conduct under the Anti-Corruption Code.

Article 2.4.7: Obstructing or delaying any investigation that may be carried out by the ACU in relation to possible Corrupt Conduct under the Anti-Corruption Code (by any Participant), including (without limitation) concealing, tampering with or destroying any documentation or other information that may be relevant to that investigation and/or that may be evidence of or may lead to the discovery of evidence of Corrupt Conduct under the Anti-Corruption Code.

Having admitted the charges, Shohaly accepted a sanction of a five-year period of ineligibility starting 10 February 2025.

The charges relate to corrupt approaches made in relation to matches in the ICC Women's T20 World Cup 2023 held in South Africa.