NEW DELHI: The CBI has dispatched to Interpol the documents required for issuing a red-corner notice against former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had asked the CBI to secure a red-corner notice against Lalit, against whom a non-bailable arrest warrant was issued earlier this month by a Mumbai court over his alleged involvement in the financial irregularities in the IPL.
Once a red-corner notice is issued, Interpol can arrest an offender from any part of the world and inform the country where he or she is wanted and ask it to get him/her extradited for further action.
An ED official said Lalit hadn’t presented himself before the CBI for questioning in connection with a money-laundering case filed over a 2008 deal on the TV rights of IPL matches. The case relates to a deal between World Sports Group and Multi Screen Media for the TV rights.
The BCCI in 2010 had filed a case in Chennai under various IPC Sections, and two years later, the ED registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in the matter.
In 2008, the BCCI awarded media rights to World Sports Group for $918 million for 10 years. In the same year, World Sports Group entered into a deal with Multi Screen Media to make Sony the IPL’s official broadcaster. The contract was replaced a year later with a nine-year deal where Multi Screen Media paid $1.63 billion.
The ED started a probe in 2009 under the Foreign Exchange Management Act to investigate allegations that Multi Screen Media Singapore paid Rs 425 crore as facilitation fee to World Sports Group Mauritius in an illegal way. The payments were made to unauthorised beneficiaries and not cricket regulators as per the contract. The ED is investigating allegations that Lalit had told select bidders how much to bid for and how to win the first IPL team auction in 2008.
The agency is also probing whether he had used illegal money to buy his corporate jet through a Cayman Islands company. The Rs 10-crore investment, through a Mauritian company, in Anand Heritage Hotels owned by Lalit and his wife, is also under the ED scanner.