da realbet： A CBI team has reached Monaco to probe the alleged bungling in theaward of telecast rights of the 1999 World Cup played in England,agency sources said in New Delhi on Thursday
26-Jul-2001A CBI team has reached Monaco to probe the alleged bungling in theaward of telecast rights of the 1999 World Cup played in England,agency sources said in New Delhi on Thursday.The Deputy Inspector General of the Anti-Corrpution Unit of the CBI SPSingh reached Monaco, an island located at the south-easternMediterranean coast of France, earlier this week to probe the allegedbungling.CBI sources said that the television deal between the InternationalCricket Council, officials of Doordarshan and Worldtel took place inthis island and the sleuths are hopeful of “picking up some threadsabout the deal.”Singh earlier visited London and held extensive discussions with ICC’sAnti-Corruption unit officials in connection with investigation intothe controversial television rights deal for the ICC knock outtournament in Dhaka three years ago.Though there was no major breakthrough in the probe, CBI sources saidthe support from ICC was important for the agency as some of thecricket world body’s unknown officials had also been named in two ofthe cases.The CBI, on November 8 last year, had registered five cases againstsome Doordarshan officials for allegedly cheating Prasar Bharti ofcrores of rupees in award of telecast rights for cricket and tennismatches.Among the five cases, three relate to alleged bungling in telecastrights for the 1997 Independence Cup, the ICC Knock-out tournament in1998 in Dhaka and the World Cup in 1999.The CBI has already made a request for release of details of thecontroversial television deal about the ICC knock out tournament inDhaka in which the agency has named some unknown officials of ICC inits FIR.The deal involved two transactions. A consortium headed by Doordarshanwon the right to televise the event after the ICC decided to increasetheir minimum guarantee to 10 million dollars.WorldTel had a deal with the Doordarshan consortium to distribute therights around the world and to produce the TV coverage.The CBI alleged that some officials of Doordarshan entered into acriminal conspiracy with the Bangalore-based WorldTel and Delhi-basedStracon India and dishonestly enhanced the bid for the telecast of thetournament.