The Income-Tax Department probing the murky IPL deals is trying to ascertain whether anyone in IPL benefited from the 10 per cent commission paid to event management company International Marketing Group (IMG).
"We got the copy of the legal contract between IPL and IMG which promises 10 per cent commission of the total annual revenue to IMG, which is managing the IPL," a source from I-T told PTI on Sunday in Mumbai.
"The investigation team will enquire whether 'somebody' in IPL benefited from the commission against the global practice of 3-4 per cent." he said.
IMG could not be reached for its comments.
According to data available with I-T, in 2008 and 2009, IMG was paid Rs 43-crore and Rs 33-crore respectively. "We will further enquire the transactions of IMG to know whether some part of this money has come back to India through Mauritius route or through any other tax havens," he said.
The department hasn't started any enquiry about the personal assets of IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi so far, he said.
"We have just started the investigation. Now we are investigating the ownerships of franchises and the various deals IPL has done with companies like WSG, MSM and IMG. We haven't come through any evidence on whether Modi's travels on private jets were paid by IPL or not. But we are going to investigate all these. We are also probing whether Modi has benefited in the deal in which USD 80 million was paid as 'facilitation fee' to WSG by MSM," the source said.
BCCI and IPL have submitted almost all the documents related to the franchises, he said, adding "we will seek more documents if necessary and now we are studying those which are submitted." PTI
