Under fire over allegations of foreign exchange violations in Indian Premier League, the top office-bearers of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) today expressed their helplessness before a Parliamentary panel looking into the alleged irregularities in the mega cricket event.
BCCI President Shashank Manohar and Secretary N Srinivasan were grilled by the panel for almost two hours.
In response to most queries by members of the Standing Committee on Finance, the response from the BCCI brass was on expected lines: “What can we do? We can only hang our heads in shame.”
Manohar and Srinivasan squarely blamed sacked IPL commissioner Lalit Modi for the murky deals and said they had given approvals at his behest in good faith.
Both conceded they may have been engaged in violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema) by accepting money from the South African Cricket Board and opening foreign exchange bank accounts in violation of laws.
When asked whether Mauritius-based companies had contributed to the coffers of IPL and whether the BCCI knew the kind of trade these companies were engaged in – whether there was an involvement of the drug mafia or hawala operators – the two officebearers had no definitive answer. They said they had no knowledge of the source of funds.
Manohar and Srinivasan were also confronted with questions on the reasoning behind the several resolutions passed by the BCCI that gave Lalit Modi a free hand to spend money as he liked and if they knew the dates on which the money was spent. “The two officebearers tried to answer but after a while fell silent because they did not know enough,” said an MP. On the central issue – whether Lalit Modi enjoyed political patronage and whether that made him immune to scrunity by law-enforcing authorities like the Enforcement Directorate – no minister’s name was directly mentioned.
“The questions on the tenure of Sharad Pawar as BCCI chief were not very direct. But when we asked Manohar if he had signed cheques or had got instructions, he tried to explain that the BCCI chief at the time was Pawar. However, his voice tailed off. ‘This was unknown to us, we didn’t know’ he said,” the MP said.
A member said that in his 12-13 years in Parliament, never had he seen such a fraught committee session. The BCCI officebearers admitted they had got a hint of the alleged irregularities when a contractor complained to the BCCI that he had received a payment of only Rs 50,000 per car instead of the assured amount of Rs 150,000 per car, for 15 cars.
The panel members, cutting across party lines, feel India may be staring at a massive defalcation of public money. The Enforcement Directorate has given an assurance that it was working to get to the bottom of the IPL fraud.
One of the committee members told Business Standard: “We are looking for an answer to several questions. Whether all the teams and companies were making losses? If so, why are the franchises still investing in these teams? Who are the people behind the Punjab team? Why has no complaint been made about moneylaundering?”
