Amit Bandre dnaFormer Indian Premier League (IPL) commissioner Lalit Modi’s bank accountsand affiliated accounts of his companies inSingapore and Mauritius are soon going to be seized by the two governments.
According to Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials, these countries have started the process of identifying the bank accounts which could be seized, attached and confiscated as per the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The move comes after the Singapore and Mauritius authorities received the letters rogatory (LR) from Indian authorities in the last week of July.
An LR is a formal request for assistance from an Indian court to a foreign court through the external affairs ministry.
“Both the countries sought specific transaction details of Modi between 2008 and 2015. This is the first time we are getting very supportive and positive response from the overseas governments,” a senior ED official told dna.
The enforcement agency has sent two LRs to Singapore and Mauritius under the PMLA.
“According to norms, after the identification of Modi’s accounts, his family members and his maze of companies, they can immediately seize it, which could eventually turn into attachment and confiscation, depending on the government order,” said the official.
dna has learnt that bank accounts seizure is the part of the LR procedure, and it does not require any prior approval. However, the attachment and confiscation of the concerned entities would be done only after the approval of the country which made a legal request for it.
In the LRs, the ED had sought the banking transactions between Sony’s Singapore-based subsidiary Multi Screen Media (MSM) and World Sports Group (WSG), signed by Modi in March 2009, to investigate their links with Modi.
MSM was given media rights worth Rs 470 crore for the IPL in 2009 and Modi allegedly entered into a back-end agreement with Sony to ensure a Rs 125 crore payment to the little-known WSG, which had been awarded a contract by him earlier.
The agency is also keen to get information on the ‘memorandum of incorporation’ of the 2008 agreement and to record the statements of three facilitators – Venu Nair, Seamous O’Brain and Andrew Gerogiou – of the agreement between WSG and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
In a communication to the ED, WSG had claimed that they received a small part of the $22.22 million from MSM, which was utilised locally to “satisfy debts and obligations”.
According to ED sources, the deal payments were made to “unauthorised beneficiaries” and not to the cricket regulating bodies as per norms of the contract.
The BCCI had registered an FIR in Chennai in 2010 under various provisions of the IPC. Two years later, the ED registered a case under PMLA on the deal.
Meanwhile, the Interpol’s red corner notice (RCN) is awaited to be posted on the website. On August 20, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had sent documents to Interpol to process the RCN against Modi.
The ED had, in July, moved for RCN against him on the basis of a non-bailable warrant issued by a Mumbai special court.
