New Delhi:
Speaking to NDTV, City Corporation's Managing Director Anirudh Deshpande has said it was a known fact that he had made a bid for the Pune Indian Premiere League (IPL) team using City Corp's name but had told the IPL he would float a new company if the bid was successful.
"The bid was purchased in the name of the company...but I had told the IPL that I will float a separate firm if I win the bid. The January letter was always disclosed...it was in the bid document itself...it is not fabricated. City Corp decided later they will not bid," Deshpande told NDTV.
(Read: Deshpande bid for company: BCCI sources)Deshpande has all this while maintained that the bid had nothing to do with Former BCCI chief and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and he bid in his individual capacity. "Company was not interested in bidding, so I bid myself," he had earlier said.
While Sharad Pawar says his investments in the company do not link him to the IPL bidding process, BCCI sources have told NDTV that there is clear and documentary evidence that when Deshpande made the bid for the Pune team, he was acting for the company and not in his individual capacity.
(Watch: No action against City Corp unless shareholders complain: Khurshid)NDTV has learnt that a letter written in January this year clearly authorised Deshpande to bid on behalf of the company, and also that the supporting documents submitted for the bid were all company documents, including the balance sheets of City Corp
When NDTV asked Pawar about BCCI's latest claim that City Corporation, of which Pawar and his family own 16 percent, gave its MD Anirudh Deshpande the go ahead to bid, he said his position on the issue had not changed. "The company board did not support the bid," Pawar reiterated.
Ever since there have been reports of City Corp bidding for the Pune team, Pawar and his Parliamentarian daughter Supriya Sule have been denying their involvement in the failed IPL bid.
"I have stated earlier also that neither I nor any of my family members were involved in any IPL team or the bidding process and I reiterate that statement," Pawar had said reacting to reports that he, his wife and daughter held 16 per cent shares in the Pune-based City Corporation.
"We were not involved at all in the bidding process. Even in the report, Mr Deshpande has made his position absolutely clear," he had told reporters on Friday.
"In (the Board's) resolution, it was made absolutely clear that there is no direct or indirect involvement of any shareholder other then Mr Deshpande personally," he added.
Sule too sprang in defence of her family, saying they had nothing to do with Deshpande's bid for the Pune IPL team, which eventually lost out to the Sahara Group.
"We are a minority shareholder in the company and we don't sit on the board. Now if people (Deshpande) have gone in without the permission of the board, how am I involved?" she asked in a press conference in Mumbai.
Meanwhile, suspended IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi has come out in full support of Pawar and said he was not involved in the bidding.
(Read: Lalit Modi maligning board, says BCCI)"Talk of Pawar's involvement is a joke. Deshpande bid in his own name. This was qualified. He put together a consortium. And also mentioned that a new company will be formed. City Corp was not the actual bidder. Except to show the net worth of one promoter," Modi has said.
"Mr Pawar and family have nothing to do with the bidding documents and with the bid that was made by Mr Deshpande. He lost it anyway," Modi told NDTV.
And while Modi gave clean chit to Pawar, he claimed interim IPL chief Chirayu Amin was a part of the consortium along with Deshpande and Akruti.
To which BCCI President Shashank Manohar lashed out at him for maligning the image of the Board and its members.
(Watch: BCCI hits back at Lalit Modi, defends Chirayu Amin)