Lawyers set to challenge ban on Samuels

KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – Lawyers for suspended West Indian cricketer Marlon Samuels have announced their intention to challenge the two-year ban imposed on the Jamaican.

In a press release here Saturday, Jamaican attorneys K. Churchill Neita and Delano Harrison, both Queen Counsel, said they believe an application for judicial review stands a realistic chance of success and plan to pursue it actively.

Firstly, they claim there was no evidence in the hearing that Mukesh Kochbar, was a bookmaker.

“From the outset, we wish to make it pellucidly clear that we propose to challenge the findings of the majority (3 to 1) by way of judicial enquiry, as we believe a most grave injustice has been done by their finding of our client’s liability of one of the ICC (International Cricket Council) disciplinary offences,” the statement said.

The lawyers said there was a need to clarify the “many misunderstandings and misconceptions” that have arisen from Samuels’ hearing before the WICB’s disciplinary committee in St Lucia on May 9.

Samuels was charged with receipt of “any money, benefit or other reward (whether financial or otherwise) which could bring (him) or the game of cricket into disrepute.”

He was also cited for engaging “in any conduct which, in the opinion of the executive board, relates directly to any of the rules of conduct, i.e,. to and is prejudicial to the interests of the game of cricket.”

In their release, Neita and Harrison contended that the hotel bill paid by Kochbar for Samuels was a loan “from a friend and father-figure which was to be repaid on Marlon’s return to the West Indies.”

It was also pointed out that Samuels only needed a loan because money which he had expected to earn from a contract to participate in a television reality show, did not materialize.

The lawyers further said that the loan arrangement occurred two weeks after the alleged offences when the West Indies tour of India had ended and would not have arisen had Samuels not stayed on to fulfill the television contract.

Neita and Harrison also noted that the WICB’s disciplinary committee “agreed unreservedly” with Samuels’ defence “that there has not been proved against Mr. Samuels any element … or corruption.”

“They found “no basis upon which to find that Mr. Samuels acted dishonestly or in a corrupt manner.”

“They accepted that Mr. Samuels is an honest cricketer, that he has never betted on cricket matches and that he was unwittingly and innocently sucked into an unhealthy vortex by an unscrupulous gambler posing as a mentor, a father figure,” the statement said.

Samuels’ lawyers further noted that despite all this, the panel still somehow arrived at such a verdict.

“We did not hesitate to say that we were amazed at the panel’s decision and consider the reasons advanced, flawed and in defiance of logic,” Neita and Harrison said in their joint release.

It was also pointed out by the lawyers that Professor Aubrey Bishop, a former chief justice and Chancellor of the Judiciary of Guyana, was the lone member of the committee, who dissented.