Late South African skipper Hansie Cronje, who admitted to taking money from bookmakers in return for match-related information, had more than 70 illegal overseas bank accounts, a leading British daily said on Sunday.

Cronje, who died in a plane crash last June, had "71 or 72 accounts and all were illegal, as he did not declare them to the South African Revenue Service", the Sunday Telegraph said quoting law enforcement officers.

The accounts, based in the Cayman Islands, were in addition to the 27 that were found to be in the name of Cronje in South Africa, the report said.

The amount of money in them has never been established.

According to a source close to South Africa's director of public prosecutions, the audit of Cronje's affairs was terminated. "When the plane crashed the investigation was called off. There was nobody left to prosecute," he said.

However, another source claimed that the probe was called off a month before Cronje's death. The South African government, already concerned at the mounting cost of the inquiry, was alarmed at the embarrassment the country would suffer in the midst of the World Cup if the full extent of Cronje's corruption became known.

At the King Commission in Cape Town in June 2000, Cronje admitted to accepting $130,000 from bookmakers for giving pitch and other match-related information.

That sum was always suspected to be the tip of the iceberg, the paper said.