Police register case against Modi

The Chennai police have registered a case against Lalit Modi, the former IPL chairman, and six others on allegations of criminal conspiracy, cheating and falsification of accounts, according to a report in the Hindu. The case is based on a complaint filed by the BCCI on Wednesday.

Four of the six others named in the case are from the World Sport Group: its chairman Seamus O'Brian, its chief operating officer, Andrew Georgio, and the president and vice-president of its South Asia operations, Venu Nair and Haris Krishnamachari. The other two are Ajay Varma, representative of software and security firm Visual Impact and Kunal Dasgupta, the former head of Multi-Screen Media, the broadcast rights holder for the IPL.

The case has been registered under Sections 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery), 477 A (falsification of accounts) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

This is the first step of a police investigation under Indian law; the allegations will now be probed by police and legal experts, who will press charges if they find evidence and eventually take the case to court.

The move to file charges is a continuation of the decisions taken at a special general meeting of the board in June this year. "It has taken the BCCI a while to press the criminal charges because we were getting legal opinions and all the paperwork ready," A BCCI official told ESPNcricinfo. "The case grew in recent months when we came across the contract around the virtual security van".

The allegations revolve around three issues - the facilitation fee payment to WSG for the India media rights to the IPL, the sale of mid-over ads and the hiring of security vans for the tournament. The board has argued that the fee paid to WSG was an "improper payment" and the matter is currently under arbitration in Singapore.

A WSG spokesperson said they had not seen the complaint and therefore had no comment.

The rights to sell mid-over ads was given to Pioneer Diagsys, an ad-sales agency run by Dasgupta, without a contract and the BCCI claim that since Modi did not issue a tender for the contract, he has cost the board money

The board also claimed that Visual Impact, the company Modi contracted to provide security vans does not exist, and that the money paid to them was misappropriated.