Criminal Charges Against Former Cricket Canada CEO Salman Khan Shahzad Dropped

Criminal charges against former Cricket Canada chief executive Salman Khan Shahzad collapsed in a Calgary courtroom on Monday, ending a long-running fraud case that had cast a shadow over the sport’s national governing body.

Shahzad, also known as Salman Khan, had been accused of misappropriating $200,000 from the Calgary and District Cricket League. The 47-year-old faced charges of fraud over $5,000 and theft over $5,000, laid in March 2025 and tied to alleged wrongdoing between 2014 and 2016.

The trial was supposed to start Monday morning. It never did.

Instead, prosecutor Petter Hurich rose and withdrew the charges, cutting the case off before a single witness could be called.

The Crown Prosecution Service, in a statement to CBC News, said its lawyers are bound by an “ongoing obligation to review all available admissible evidence to ensure the matter continues to meet the standard for prosecution.” In this case, the Crown concluded there was “insufficient evidence to proceed to trial.”

For Shahzad, it marked the end of a legal fight that had stretched for years and reached into every corner of his professional life.

Defence lawyer Jim Lutz said his client was “greatly relieved” by the decision, calling it “the right result in law for Khan.” Lutz said the defence team had spent nearly a year dissecting the file, “critically evaluating the evidence,” and that Shahzad was “extremely grateful the Crown took the time to thoroughly review this file.”

Shahzad was not the only official under scrutiny. Former Calgary and District Cricket League treasurer Syed Wajahat Ali had faced the same fraud and theft charges. Ali says those counts were withdrawn earlier this year, quietly closing his part of the case before Shahzad’s.

Fallout at Cricket Canada

The criminal investigation did not stay confined to local league politics. It rippled all the way up to Cricket Canada’s boardroom.

Cricket Canada terminated Shahzad as CEO in December 2025, nine months after Calgary police publicly announced the charges following a board-led investigation. In a statement on its website, the board said the dismissal arose from Shahzad’s “failure to disclose prior criminal charges — an act that constituted a serious breach of trust — along with violations of organizational bylaws related to his contract.”

That contract is now at the centre of a separate battle.

According to reporting by CBC’s the fifth estate, Shahzad’s deal with Cricket Canada included a clause entitling him to full term pay if he was fired for any reason other than a criminal conviction related to his role as CEO. With the criminal case now dropped and no conviction on his record from these charges, Shahzad is reportedly fighting for the organization to honour that agreement and pay out the remaining $475,000.

CBC News has requested comment from Cricket Canada on the contract dispute and the end of the criminal case. The governing body has yet to respond.

How the case began

The police probe traces back to a 2017 audit of the Calgary and District Cricket League’s financial records, ordered by a newly appointed league president. That audit raised red flags and triggered a deeper look at how money was being spent.

When Calgary police announced the charges last year, investigators alleged Shahzad and Ali had misappropriated funds through cheque payments to construction businesses and contractors tied to the league’s former president and treasurer. Officers said those payments were supposedly for repairs and upgrades to the league’s clubhouse and grounds.

According to police at the time, some of that work was allegedly never completed. Other work, they said, was done poorly, using inferior products. Those allegations never reached the test of trial. With Monday’s withdrawal, they now sit in the file of a case the Crown no longer believes it can prove.

Match-fixing claims and gang links

Shahzad’s name has surfaced in an even more explosive context: match-fixing allegations and the reach of organized crime into Canadian cricket.

The fifth estate has reported on claims that the Bishnoi gang — allegedly run from an Indian prison by Lawrence Bishnoi — has influence over Cricket Canada. The program obtained a letter from the gang to police that declared, “We will rule in CANADA,” and raised questions about threats, corruption and intimidation around the sport.

As part of that investigation, the fifth estate obtained audio from a former Cricket Canada head coach. In that recording, the coach claimed he had been asked to fix parts of matches by then-CEO Shahzad and two other former leaders within the organization.

Those are allegations, not charges. They have not been tested in court.

Shahzad, in a lengthy email to CBC News, has categorically denied “any involvement in spot fixing, session fixing, betting or influencing team selection for improper purposes.”

With the fraud and theft case now gone, the legal landscape has shifted. The questions around governance, integrity and money in Canadian cricket have not.