Agarwal report says Dalmiya, Mascarenhas defrauded Doordarshan of $4 million

In a press meet here, Agarwal wanted to know why the Prasar Bharati Board had decided to shelve the file without referring the matter to Vigilance or the Central Bureau of Investigation as desired by former Chief Executive Officer OP Kejriwal, who had appointed Agarwal to conduct the inquiry. Agarwal said it was clear of “the level of corruption in cricket not only involves players but even prominent personalities who are closely associated with the game”.

Agarwal alleged that Dalmiya, in March 1998, entered into post-bid negotiations with Doordarshan as the sole negotiator for the ICC Knockout Tournament and increased the telecast fee from $8 million to $11 million, of which $4 million were to be for the Indian rights, six million for international rights and one million towards international costs. However, Stracon advised through a letter on March 3 that it had already sold the international rights to Mark Mascarenhas for $8 million and the Indian rights would now cost $8 million. Thus, a benefit of $4 million was given to Mascarenhas, Agarwal said.

Relating the sequence of events, Agarwal said the ICC asked Prasar Bharati in February 1998 to deposit a bank guarantee of 10% of the bid amount, despite the fact that this had not been a part of the bid document. Stracon India entered into a Memorandum Of Understanding with WorldTel on February 19 for transfer of international (minus India) marketing rights to Mascarenhas of WorldTel for $3 million, but this was kept secret from Doordarshan. Thereafter, Doordarshan requested Stracon to procure a bank guarantee on its behalf and create a charge on the international rights of the tournament, without mentioning any amounts or inviting competitive bids. WorldTel was recognised as the overseas rights holder.

The controversial report on the sports consortium had revealed that Doordarshan suffered losses running into several crores of rupees from telecasting of several sporting events during 1998-99 either because of some collusion/misappropriation or because of lack of proper planning by Doordarshan officials.

Submitted to the board in May last year, the report related to sports events in 1998-99 and the working of the sports consortium which had been formed when SS Gill was CEO of Prasar Bharati. While the report, which was discussed by the board, was never made public, Agarwal said he had been encouraged to make it public firstly no Prasar Bharati document was secret by an order of Gill and because he wanted to show that the money involved in match-fixing was nothing in comparison to the consortium scams.

A cursory reading of the report raises several questions about crores of rupees involved in the Doordarshan telecasts. For example, it is still not known why India paid as much as US $6 million — for the telecast of just 11 matches out of the US $24 million which the England and Wales Cricket Board received from all over the world (with many countries telecasting all the 42 matches).

The report also shows that Doordarshan did not earn a single rupee from nine events including Wimbledon, World Cup Soccer, French Open Tennis and Mini World Cup cricket which were beamed live in 1998, and had in fact lost money.

Although it was flaunted as the first time that Doordarshan had bagged world rights of a major sports event, the Agarwal Report also says that Doordarshan had lost a sum of about Rs 20 crore in connection with the telecasts of the ICC Tournament in Bangladesh two years ago. The broadcaster lost three to four million US dollars on account of under-realisation from the sale of international rights in view of higher bidding being available. It had also paid the withholding tax of Rs 5.11 crore and waived the opportunity cost which was Rs 14 lakh for weekdays and Rs 17 lakh for weekends.

In addition, a sum of Rs 30 lakh had been spent for advertisements in local papers. All this was in addition to expenditures on account of foreign trips, interest costs, and precious foreign exchange. The report shows there were dealings for the championship in the name of the consortium even before the consortium formally came into being in March 1998.

Also, there is still no definite explanation — despite half-hearted attempts by Doordarshan officials — to what happened to an amount of about Rs 7.5 crore lying in Doordarshan’s Canara Bank account for the World Cup/Sharjah events. Doordarshan officials have not been able to explain why an account and a foreign letter of credit of about Rs 10 crore in connection with the Sharjah and World Cups was opened in a bank other than the State Bank of India which handles Doordarshan accounts.