Mumbai: The Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) top brass will meet officials of the sports management firm IMG Monday to seek details of the financial dealings during suspended Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi’s tenure.
The IMG conducts the IPL and recently hit the headlines for being part of Modi’s alleged plans of starting a rebel Twenty20 league in England.
The firm would be represented by its senior vice-president Andrew Whiteblood and legal experts Paul Manning and John Loffhagen.
They are scheduled to meet the BCCI president Shashank Manohar and secretary N Srinivasan at the BCCI’s headquarters and also expected to be present are interim IPL chairman Chirayu Amin and his advisor Bharat Patel.
The meeting has been convened for the IMG officials to apprise the top Board officials on all matters relating to IPL, including the awarding of the global broadcast rights to Multi Screen Media-World Sports Group, since its conception, according to sources.
The meeting comes less than 48 hours after Modi responded on Saturday to the BCCI’s show cause notice on allegations of financial irregularities and bid riggings related to the T20 League with a voluminous reply running into over 10,000 pages.
In January 2008, the IPL was put on board with the conduct of bidding for eight city-based franchisees for which invitations to tenders were issued in December the previous year.
Ten days prior to the franchisee bidding, the global media rights were sold to Sony-WSG consortium for a ten-year period for $1.026billion that included a commitment of $108 million towards promotions.
The original deal that was later re-negotiated to a whopping Rs 8,200-crore nine-year deal with the same MSM (previously Sony)-WSG consortium one year later in an out-of-court settlement after the BCCI cancelled Sony’s bid for breaking contractual clauses.
On March 15, 2009 the BCCI ended its previously signed contract with MSM and on the same day entered into an exclusive new contract with Mauritius-based WSG which was challenged by MSM in the court.
The court proceedings were dropped after the out-of-court settlement was reached which is now under a cloud because of a facilitation fee of Rs 435 crore given by MSM to WSG.
In a media statement on April 23 this year, the Singapore-based MSM said its aim in the new commercial negotiation was two-fold.
The first was to secure the rights that had been unilaterally terminated and for the entire 9-year period keeping BCCI unaffected by paying the same amount to the Board as contracted by WSG Mauritius, it said.
“It was MSM’s clear position that to secure its business interests, the broadcasting rights agreement should be a direct contract with the BCCI, rather than as a sub-license under an agreement with WSG Mauritius, which had these rights,” as per the agreement with BCCI dated March 15, 2009.
To facilitate MSM’s condition for a direct contract with BCCI, WSG Mauritius agreed to give up its broadcast rights for the Indian subcontinent in favour of MSM, thus paving the way for BCCI and MSM to enter into a contract directly. In consideration for this, MSM agreed to pay WSG Mauritius a facilitation fee.
MSM further detailed the Rs 425 crore given to WSG as ”Facilitation Fee” contained.
(PTI)
