Dalmiya refutes impropriety in Dhaka deal

The ICC President, Jagmohan Dalmiya, has finally come out of the shadows to wrestle with the charges that he was involved in financial irregularities over the awarding of television rights for the ICC knockout tournament in Dhaka in 1998. "Any such insinuation can best be described as an effort to malign through distorted facts by diverting from the main issues", he said, adding that the accounts were quite clear the entire revenue earned from Prasar Bharati had gone to the ICC. The charges were first levelled by Arun Agrawal, a former financial adviser to Prasar Bharati, and subsequently denied by ICC Chief Executive David Richards who said on May 2 that Dalmiya "has not been involved in negotiations with any of the four companies bidding for the television rights for that tournament."

Further investigations by human sniffer dogs uncovered a document written by a certain Prasar Bharati official, Rakesh Bahadur, in March 1998, which vouched that Dalmiya had indeed interlocuted with Prasar Bharati in connection with the bid submitted by them. Last Sunday, the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Lord MacLaurin, was quoted as saying in a British newspaper that the document would be circulated to members of the ICC board. "We need to see the report and I understand it is on its way... (if) it is irrefutable evidence that the press and public have been misinformed, then we have a problem", MacLaurin said.

With the decibel level getting too loud for comfort, Dalmiya pondered for awhile before making the decisive step yesterday of issuing a statement from Calcutta in which he took refuge in the subtleties of the English language. "It appears that there is a deliberate attempt to twist the words of the Chief Executive. By the term negotiation, the chief executive had implied financial dealings with the bidders. But, the efforts are now to concoct a story out of which it is being made out that I had spoken to or through internal notes in the files concerning Prasar Bharati", Dalmiya said.

"The truth is that I did not enter into any financial negotiation with any bidder. If, however, any bidder had sought clarifications from me about the methodology of revenue sharing or had appealed to me for time extension to submit their bids, these were mere discussions and cannot certainly be termed as financial negotiation. As a result of such discussions, the price had neither been varied nor affected", his statement went on to say. It is unlikely that the furore is going to die down quickly and having sued Agrawal for defamation, Dalmiya will have to sharpen his arguments if he is to make a successful prosecution in court when the case comes up for hearing on June 16.