London [UK]/ New Delhi [India], July 22 (ANI): IPL founder and first chairman Lalit Modi on Wednesday said that he will return to India after the Appellate Tribunal under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators – Forfeiture of Property – Act (SAFEMA) set aside most of the Enforcement Directorate (ED)’s findings and penalties in the 2009 IPL South Africa FEMA case.
In a video shared with ANI, Lalit Modi welcomed the verdict and said he would return to India after October this year.
“I’m really happy with the verdict yesterday. It’s really been a great day. 16 years, I have fought, and whatever I have been saying to the media and to everybody has finally emerged as the truth. I’m really happy that the tribunal has ruled in my favour. I was only concerned with the well-being of the IPL and nothing and nothing at all. That is the most dear to me,” he said.
“Now that chapter is behind me, I’m going to move on in my life, and I’m looking forward to coming back to India. I will come back probably at the end of this year or early next year. My daughter is due with my grandson in October, and hopefully everything will be well, and I’ll be back in India,” he added.
Earlier on Tuesday, a bench of Chairman Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Member Rajesh Malhotra partly allowed the appeals against the ED’s order dated May 31, 2018, which had imposed penalties on BCCI, Lalit Modi, N Srinivasan, M P Pandove, the State Bank of India and its former Chief Manager A K Nazeer Khan for alleged violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
The case relates to the 2009 IPL season, which was shifted from India to South Africa due to the General Elections to the Lok Sabha. The ED had alleged that BCCI violated FEMA rules while sending money abroad for organising the tournament and had imposed penalties running into several crores on BCCI and its office-bearers.
The Tribunal also cleared the authorised dealer bank and its officer of liability, holding that the foreign remittances were processed in the normal course and could not be treated as FEMA violations on their part.
However, the Tribunal upheld the ED’s findings on two limited issues. It upheld the penalty of Rs 4 crore on BCCI for remitting an amount higher than what was reflected in its books of accounts. It also agreed that there was a delay in bringing ticket sale money back to India but reduced BCCI’s penalty on this issue from Rs 4 crore to Rs 1 crore, noting that the money was eventually repatriated.
The Tribunal, however, set aside the penalty imposed on Lalit Modi on the issue of delayed repatriation, observing that he had already been suspended and was no longer in charge when the money was brought back to India.
In a statement, Lalit Modi said that for over sixteen years he has consistently maintained that he acted “in good faith, in the best interests of Indian cricket and the IPL, and committed no personal wrongdoing”.
He said the decision to move the tournament to South Africa in 2009 was taken under extraordinary circumstances when India’s general elections made it impossible to host the tournament at home.
“The successful staging of that season ensured that the IPL survived and ultimately became one of the world’s most valuable sporting properties,” the statement said.
In an interview with ANI in June, Lalit Modi had fiercely rejected the ‘fugitive’ label slapped on him, pointing out that he has never been convicted of a single crime.
He mocked the idea that he is successfully hiding from Indian authorities, attributing the narrative entirely to media sensationalism rather than legal reality. He rubbished claims that he is on the run, arguing that evading an emerging power like India while travelling the world is an impossibility.
“I’m not running at all. I’m going all over the world. If I was running, you would be picking me up somewhere or the other. The Indian government has a long arm… You can’t take on the government of India. And I don’t intend to. It’s not the government. It’s the media,” he said. (ANI)
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