New Delhi:
One crooked deal after another has revealed that the team that organised the Commonwealth Games in India was incorporated as the worst sort of Badmaash Company.
Adding to the injury of the thousands of missing crores is the insult that the various deals were crassly crafted. But the corruption that became the currency of the Games is now going to hit India where it hurts.
Some of the men who organised the Games have been arrested, interrogated and released. They have left behind a stack of unpaid bills. Bills that will be paid by you.
NDTV used the Right to Information Act to get the financial big picture. The Games were held in October amid a series of media reports on how the Organising Committee for the event, headed by Suresh Kalmadi, had converted the Games into their financial fiefdom.
The result: a deficit of nearly Rs 1500 crore.
The Games were meant to earn 1780 crores - a target set by Games Organising Committee chairman, who promised the games would be revenue neutral.
The revenue, however, adds upto just Rs 400 crore.
In recent weeks, several of Kalmadi's closest aides and members of the Organising Committee were arrested, some of them for trying to obstruct the CBI's inquiry into the body's financial history.
In January this year, Kalmadi was sacked as Chairman by Sports Minister Ajay Maken.
Total expenditure for the Games added up to almost Rs 1700 crore - of this the government has had to pay nearly Rs 1300 crore.
Sponsorship was meant to bring in Rs 400 crore, but only half that amount was earned, with Rs 75 crore coming from the Indian Railways.
Weeks before the Games began, SMAM, an Austrlian company hired to bring in international sponsors, was fired after media reports that it had failed to deliver any significant contracts, but was on the verge of being paid a huge commission even for deals being signed directly between the Organising Committee and Indian Public Sector Units like the Railways.
Broadcasting rights delivered Rs 174 crores instead of the planned Rs 370 crore.
The deal with SIS Live, a UK-based firm, has earned its place among the top 3 swindles of the Commonwealth Games. SIS was paid Rs 246 crore, and among various problems with that was that SIS was allowed to sub-contract its work within hours of the contract being signed to a Delhi-based company. It earned a significant profit from this.