da brdice： Welcoming the support from the International Cricket Council (ICC),CBI on Sunday said it would soon send a team to London to gatherinformation from the world body on the cricket telecast rights caseand other matters arising out of the match-fixing
10-Jun-2001Welcoming the support from the International Cricket Council (ICC),CBI on Sunday said it would soon send a team to London to gatherinformation from the world body on the cricket telecast rights caseand other matters arising out of the match-fixing scandal.”We would be soon sending a team to London and the support from ICC isimportant for us as some of their officials have also been named intwo of the cases,” CBI spokesman S M Khan told reporters in NewDelhi.He said the agency was always in touch with the anti-corruptionbranch of ICC and looked forward to any support from them which wasvery crucial to the investigation into the telecast rights case.CBI on November 8 registered five cases against some Doordarshanofficials for allegedly cheating the Prasar Bharti of crores of rupeesin award of telecast rights for cricket matches. The five cases relateto alleged bunglings in telecast rights for 1997 Independence Cup, ICCKnockOut tournament in 1998 played in Dhaka and the World Cup in 1999.CBI alleged that some officials of Doordarshan had entered into acriminal conspiracy with the Bangalorebased WorldTel and Delhi-basedStracon India and dishonestly enhanced the bid for the telecast of thetournament.Referring to the alleged nexus between betting syndicates andunderworld, the spokesman said “we are still looking into whetherthere is any link between match-fixing syndicate and organised crimesyndicate in the country and abroad.”Former Director of CBI R K Raghavan had sought help from other statepolice departments and central intelligence agencies in this matter.The ICC report on match-fixing, unveiled in London on May 23, hadvoiced grave concern over corrupt practices in international cricketand pledged its support to CBI in probing the links between organisedcrime and match-fixers.The CBI on May 4 last year registered a Preliminary Enquiry (PE) oninstruction from the Union Sports Ministry. The agency later submitteda 164-page report to the then Sports Minister S S Dhindsa on October31. The CBI hopes that the ICC’s efforts would lead to further probeinto the role of nine foreign players, who were not investigated bythe agency.