I-T likely to probe Kochi team owners

New Delhi: The tax administration has begun a probe into the Kochi team of Indian Premier League (IPL), engulfed in a major controversy over ownership issue, to ascertain if its money had been channelled illegally from tax havens abroad.

"The Directorate General of Investigation in Kochi had discussed this issue with senior officials in New Delhi yesterday. The department has ordered a probe into the issue," a spokesperson for the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said here Wednesday.

"This issue has now come in the public domain. So we are bound to investigate. At the moment, the probe is basically a paper-based investigation. It does not involve any formal complaint as of now," the spokesperson told IANS. "We don't fix any time frame for such probes."

According to a senior official in the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, a wing under the finance ministry's Department of Revenue, the probe on such cases mainly dwells on whether the money involved is from "clean" sources.

"Our main concern is black money parked abroad. Just as we try to prevent black money going out our country, we also try to probe if such money is channelled back into the country illegally. At the end of the day, the exchequer should not suffer," he said.

The franchise for the Kochi team, which will play from the fourth edition of the IPL Twenty-20 cricket extravaganza, was won in an auction last month by a firm called Rendezvous Sports for $333.33 million.

Along with Subroto Roy's Sahara Group, which bagged the franchise for the Pune team and the second of the two new teams, the Kochi team is scheduled to join eight other teams from the next edition of the cricket tournament.

These are: Mumbai Indians, Delhi Daredevils, Kolkata Knight Riders, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Deccan Chargers, Chennai Super Kings, Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab.

The tax probe Wednesday followed a political row in recent days after allegations that Sunanda Pushkar, a shareholder in the Kochi IPL franchise and a friend of Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, received free equity in it.

IPL commissioner Lalit Modi maintained that there was a question mark over the ownership of the Kochi IPL franchise since the owners themselves did not know some of the people involved with it.

"With regards to the eight franchisees, we know about all the stakeholders. But there are still some doubts over the ownership of the Kochi franchise. Even the people who signed the tender documents don't know who they are," Modi said.