N. Srinivasan to face criminal charges

MUMBAI, Oct. 24: The President of the Sri Ganganagar District Cricket Association, has filed a criminal complaint with the Marine Drive Police Station at Mumbai against N. Srinivasan – President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Office Bearers of MSM / Sony.

The criminal complaint alleges that Mr. N. Srinivasan and others in the BCCI, together with Andrew Kaplan, Manjit Singh, N.P. Singh and Ashok Nambissan of MSM/Sony have manipulated agreements to deprive the BCCI of crores of rupees while adding to the coffers of Sony. The criminal charges leveled are for conspiring to defraud the BCCI to the tune of over Rs. 2882 crores.

The complaint states that The IPL Media Right Contracts dated 25th March 2009 provided that on increase of two new teams the number of matches would increased per season to 94. Two new teams were to be added to the original eight-team contest from the year 2011, which corresponds to season 4 of the IPL.

Under the above contract, BCCI was entitled to 150 second Free Commercial Time (FCT), which is the time during matches which can be commercially exploited by inserting advertisements. The complaint claims that Srinivasan together with the others misled the members of the Governing Council of IPL by misrepresenting the facts in its meeting held on 25th June 2010 and forced the BCCI to bend the rules and forfeit its valuable rights in favour of Sony.

The breakup of the losses is as follows:

1. Reducing the number of matches ……. ………….Rs. 1255.44 crores

2. Giving up commercial exploitation FCT ……….. Rs. 869.60 crores

3. Giving up the IPL Entertainment Rights …………Rs. 560 crores

4. Giving Up Theatrical Rights ………………………Rs. 197 crores

TOTAL …………………………………………….Rs. 2882.04 crores