The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a new case against six officials of CWG Organising Committee and two private firms for extending undue favours while appointing official Master Licensee for merchandising and retailing during the games.
Immediately, after filing of the case, a team of CBI officials carried out search operations at 10 locations in Delhi, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Chandigarh and Panchkula.
The agency has named six OC members including the then Director General V K Verma, Joint Director General (Finance) K U K Reddy, DDG (Legal) Ram Mohan, DDG (Procurement) Surjit Lal, (F and A) M Jeychandran and the then ADG (Image and Look) Sangita Welingkar and firms Compact Disc India Limited (CDIL) and its group arm Premier Branch Private Limited (PBPL), official sources said.
The CBI alleged that these officials entered into criminal conspiracy with the officials of the firms and by abusing their official positions, extended undue favour to PBPL in appointing it as official Master Licensee for Merchandising and On-line and Retail Concessionaire for CWG-2010 for sportswear, casual wear, kids wears against a minimum royalty amount of Rs 7.05 crore, they said.
The agency alleged in the case that after scrapping of the earlier bid on flimsy grounds, the Evaluation Committee of the OC CWG-2010, dishonestly considered the PBPL on the basis of the goodwill of CDIL, and on negotiations, PBPL submitted an offer of Rs 5.20 crore for acquiring all the rights of master licensee for merchandising, they said.
"Thereafter the private company (PBPL) submitted two cheques amounting to Rs 3.5 crore but the same were dishonoured by the bank and as such the OC did not receive any amount from the private company," official spokesperson Dharini Mishra said here.
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Thus, it is alleged that the accused private company actually used the CWG brand properties and earned a huge profit, but did not pay anything to the OC, and the accused public servants caused huge pecuniary advantage to director of the private company and corresponding wrongful loss to the government exchequer, she said.
The CBI has registered nine FIRs so far in the cases related to alleged irregularities in the conduct of Commonwealth Games last year. This fresh case will take the tally to 10.