The Board of Control for Cricket in India is keeping suspended IPL chairman Lalit Modi and his legal team busy. On Monday, the board slapped its third showcause notice on him over granting of theatrical rights in November last year for IPL-3.
The IPL had awarded Entertainment & Sports Direct, an investment advisory and private equity firm, exclusive exhibition rights for audiences in cinema halls for Rs 330 crores.
On November 12 late year, Modi had expressed delight at this “one of a kind” deal and claimed to have followed the requisite procedure of inviting bids via tenders before declaring the winner.
The board sources, however, allege that Modi and Co. had played a far bigger role.
“There were two firms — Triplecom Media and Entertainment & Sports Direct — that bid for the theatrical rights are there, the ESD documents seem to be incomplete,” a senior board official told this newspaper.
Modi’s defamation notice on Clarke
The embattled administrator also served a defamation notice on England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke, who had accused the suspended IPL chief of hatching a plan to destroy the structure of world and English cricket.
Modi has said in the notice that Clarke’s claims are “utterly untrue” and that at no time did he get involved in “planning an unauthorised league anywhere in the world which is not approved either by the ICC or ICC’s member associations”.