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ED reports unlikely to back up allegations

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ED report unlikely to back up allegations

The entire controversy about money-laundering in the Indian Premier League could come to nothing by the end of this month when the Enforcement Directorate submits its report to the Indian Government. Reports suggest that, though the ED has collected data on all the franchises and their owners, there is very little that singles out any of the team owners and hence, convictions are unlikely. This was reinforced by the statement from http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Salman-c88163 Khurshid, a Union Minister, which said that there has been nothing so far regarding non-compliance of regulations by any of the eight franchises.

However, this statement is completely opposite to the comments made by Yashwant Sinha, the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on finance. Sinha had said that there were teams which had not complied with the regulations of the Companies Act and also questioned the reason for the failure to probe the sources of the funds used for the purchase of the franchises.

The investigations on the franchises began after the much-publicized spat between the suspended chairman of the IPL, Lalit Modi and the former Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor. The row began when Modi, on his ‘Twitter’ account, commented on the Kochi franchise, its shareholding pattern and about Tharoor’s involvement in it. The row also led to Modi’s suspension and Tharoor’s resignation.

The allegations on the franchise led to probes on all the other franchises by the Indian Government which also announced that “no wrong-doer will be spared”. BCCI on its part set up a disciplinary committee, which was comprised of Chirayu Amin, Arun Jaitley and Jyotiraditya Scindia. Modi was to face the committee for the first time on July 16h, after he had lost his appeal at the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mumbai-c820 High court, but had sent his lawyers instead. He had claimed that BCCI were against him and had wanted the committee to be replaced by independent figures, not connected to the board.

Scindia, who is part of the committee, said that there were some serious charges against Modi and it does appear that there were irregularities. There were even reports on a newspaper that Modi could face a lifetime ban from the BCCI. This is a massive fall from grace for a man who was treated like a prince for three years, when he introduced the IPL and then turned it into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. The committee will meet again on the 27th of July.

There is little indication that things will change. The actions against Modi, look like the only outcome of these multi-agency probes. The call fr regulations after allegations of bribery, tax evasion and money laundering, seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Khurshid himself said that if he there had been any irregularity he would have heard it by now.

It is also very evident that Modi alone could not have been responsible for the irregularities that are under scrutiny. All this vilification cannot and will not hide the fact that there is a good chance that he is being singled out for a problem with much wider roots in the IPL. The men who helped him in his rise to power seem to have deserted him now, at the moment of crisis. Even Modi’s claims that he has the backing of five of the franchises sound weak now, as all of them are looking to distance themselves from him. What looked like the cleansing of a body that was corrupt and infested, now seems to have turned into a power struggle between a man who was once powerful and the organization that had made him powerful and the one he has raised horns against.
It is clear as to who the winner would be. It should only be a matter of time, which could see a protracted battle end in the High Court once the disciplinary committee announces the verdict against Modi.

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