Warner alleged that CA had "decided who they wanted to blame from the very beginning".
Former Australia opener David Warner has accused Cricket Australia (CA) of conducting a "shoddy investigation" that "stinks of a cover-up" following the 2018 ball-tampering scandal in Cape Town.
The comments, shared on Warner's Instagram account, escalate an ongoing crisis in Australian cricket sparked by the release of Usman Khawaja's autobiography, Sabr.
Warner questioned how CA could maintain its long-standing position that the bowling group had no prior knowledge of the plot if senior bowlers Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc, and Nathan Lyon were never interviewed during the 2018 inquiry.
Warner alleged that the governing body had "decided who they wanted to blame from the very beginning" and ran a flawed probe to protect a "false narrative".
"As far as I am aware, CA did not interview Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Nathan Lyon in their 2018 investigation. If that's correct, then how can CA push the idea that the bowlers didn't know?" Warner wrote in an Instagram post.
"It looks like they had decided who they wanted to blame from the very beginning, ran a shoddy investigation to serve the purpose, and now they want to maintain the false narrative that the bowlers had no idea. That stinks of a cover-up," he added.
The 2018 controversy resurfaced after Khawaja claimed in Sabr that knowledge of the sandpaper plot extended beyond the three banned players (Warner, Steve Smith, and Cameron Bancroft) to the entire dressing room.
However, Australian Test captain Pat Cummins dismissed Khawaja’s claims as "complete and utter nonsense" during a press conference on Friday (November 13).
Prior to his Instagram post, Warner publicly supported Khawaja's account as "100 per cent accurate" and accused Cummins of throwing Khawaja "under the bus".
Notably, Warner and Smith had received 12-month bans from Cricket Australia, while Bancroft was suspended for nine months after being caught using sandpaper on the ball during the 2018 Newlands Test.
Warner, who was Test vice-captain at the time, was also handed an additional penalty of being banned from all leadership positions in international and Australian domestic cricket for life. That ban was lifted by Cricket Australia in October 2024, which enabled him to captain Sydney Thunder in the BBL.