Mumbai:
Senior leaders of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have denied that any impropriety -moral or legal - that could link them to the perfect storm that is wrecking Indian cricket.
Supriya Sule, daughter of NCP chief, Sharad Pawar, angrily denied that her husband, or his father, financially benefit from an alleged association with the company that owns telecast rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL) matches.
"My husband's only role is that he is a cricket fan," said Sule on Thursday, "he has no other role..please read my lips." On Monday, in an interview to NDTV, Supriya Sule had stated that her family does not have "a single paisa" invested in the IPL. (
Watch: My family has no IPL links, says Supriya Sule)
What's flung itself at Pawar and his daughter is the fact that her father-in-law, BR Sule, is part of a consortium called Atlas Equifin, which owns a third of the company that owns the telecast rights to all IPL matches.
The deal that sanctioned the broadcast rights is being investigated by tax officials because it involved an 80 million dollar "facilitation fee", effectively a commission, part of which allegedly went to Lalit Modi, the IPL Chairman. (
Read: Modi questioned about IPL broadcast rights deal)
BR Sule, as part of Atlas Equifin, invested in Multi Screen Media, formally known as Sony Entertainment.
Supriya Sule clarified that her father-in-law's investment is not news; it is well-known, she argued, and she stated that he had at one point served as chairman of Sony India - a position, she stresses, he held in his own right as an acclaimed and accomplished executive. However, after he fell sick, BR Sule, now 84, assigned signing rights to his son and Supriya's husband, Sadanand.
The global broadcast rights for the IPL were originally bought in 2008 by WSG for ten years for more than 900 million dollars. The TV rights for India were then allotted by WSG to MSM. However, in 2009, the IPL cancelled the MSM contract, citing, among other reasons, poor-quality broadcasts. MSM went to court, but after a tough legal battle, decided on an out-of-court settlement.
The new deal saw MSM paying more than a billion dollars to hold onto the TV rights for the remaining nine years. MSM also gave WSG an 80 million dollar (Rs 425 crore) facilitation fee as part of its agreement.
The smallest of the chinks being probed in this deal is that WSG should pay 40 crores in tax for the facilitation fee it benefitted from.
According to sources in the Income Tax Department, WSG should be taxed to the tune of Rs 40 crore for the Rs 425 crore contract facilitation fee. So far MSM Singapore has paid just Rs 125 crore against facilitation fee to WSG Mauritius; no tax has been paid since this payment. Also, once the entire facilitation fee is paid, tax liability will be around Rs 140 crore.
Supriya Sule, in her emphatic denial of all things IPL, also batted for her NCP colleague Praful Patel, saying he too had nothing to do with the league.
Through the last few weeks, Pawar and his deputy, Praful, who is also the Civil Aviation Minister, have faced quite a few IPL googlies.
(Read: I didn't give Tharoor IPL insider info, says Praful)
Through all this, the Equifin stakeholders are now under the scanner.