Lalit Modi, the former Indian Premier League (IPL) chairman, has denied rigging the second IPL team auction, insisting that everyone in the IPL and Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was aware of his family and friends being part of the original auction in 2008.
He also claimed that World Sport Group (WSG) deserved the controversial $80m facilitation fee it received for selling the broadcast rights of the Twenty20 league to Multi-Screen Media (Sony).
In an interview broadcast on his YouTube channel at the end of last week, Modi said the bidding process for the auction held in March 2010 was open and conducted under international tender rules, so there was no question of him influencing it.
"If that was the case, why did Adani not win?,” he added. “Why did Videocon not win? Sahara won it for $370m because it was an open process. Kochi won. If it was going to be a rigged process, they [Adani and Videocon] would have won."
Modi had been accused of favouring the Gujarat-based Adani group, which wanted an IPL team for Ahmedabad but lost out to Kochi and Sahara.
On the allegations that he used the IPL to enrich his family, Modi told the interviewer, sports journalist Mihir Bose, that the BCCI was fully aware of the fact that some of his relatives were involved.
It was no surprise friends and family decided to bid, he said, because they were the ones that believed in him while almost everybody else expected the IPL to fail.
"When somebody turns around and says that they didn't know about it, it's absolutely a false story,” he insisted. “The people who bid were in the room, everybody knew who they were – I mean everybody concerned, from the governing council to the BCCI members, were very much present in the room, and in fact everybody was just happy at that point in time because we got eight bids.
"In fact, [IPL] vice-chairman Niranjan Shah was questioned immediately after the auction. 'Mr Modi's relatives have bid', he said. 'So what? There are no other bidders out there, and if he has bid, he has put his own money in'. If it wasn't friends and family that are coming to bid and believed in the product, they wouldn't have had the IPL in the first place."
Modi also defended the payment of the facilitation fee to WSG, saying that WSG was the only bidder willing to take the risk and bid for the rights in the first year of the league.
"Sony actually bid but withdrew prior to the bids being opened,” he continued. “ESPN bid but they put zero numbers on the table, so their bid was disqualified. They said ‘we don't think this is going to work – we'll do a revenue-sharing deal with you’. The only company that put any money on the table above the minimum guaranteed amount was WSG. And then they did a back-to-back licensing deal with Sony.
"Now, what is the job of a marketing company, which we all forget? A marketing company's job is to buy and sell rights. So if they bought a right worth close to $2bn, as an example, and they sold it for $2bn [and] $80m to someone else, as an example, and they made $80m, what's wrong with that? I'm surprised they only made $80m."
Modi said he does not regret his comments on Twitter about the shareholding of the Kochi consortium, which eventually led to his expulsion from the league he created and built, and to the the resignation of junior external affairs minister Shashi Tharoor, who was acting as a mentor to the bidding group.
Modi also denied making any money personally from the tournament, and added that he was confident the various proceedings against him would prove his innocence: "It's going to end with my getting a clean slate."
